


Sweet Dreams

by annabellelux



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, Enemies to Lovers, Gratuitous Pining, M/M, Slow-ish burn, Tropes, Watford Eighth Year, baz is "plotting", idiots to lovers really, simon's clueless, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabellelux/pseuds/annabellelux
Summary: Simon comes back to eighth year with persistent nightmares, and Baz just wants to help by spelling him with Sweet Dreams.But when Simon's nightmares about the Humdrum start becoming romantic dreams about his nemesis... he gets suspicious.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 228
Kudos: 1172





	1. beautiful nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> look, I know this trope has been done, you know this trope has been done, we all are aware that nightmare fics are a staple of this fandom. but, tropes are tropes for a reason, and that's because tropes rock and i wanted to write this so... i did. 
> 
> thank you so much to [@thedaggerrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedfetish/pseuds/thedaggerrose) who beta read this and encouraged me to write this. she's an angel and her help is why there is not approximately two million typos in this fic, because i can never edit my own work properly, and i really needed her.
> 
> that being said, welcome to my trope-y fanfic, hope you all enjoy it!!

**Baz**

_ I need to stop this_, I think as I stand over Snow’s bed. _ I know that I need to stop this_. 

I’m about to go back to bed and force myself to fall asleep, but then Snow whimpers, and whispers, “no, please, no”, and my undead heart shatters into sharp glass pieces inside of my chest.

**“Sweet Dreams,” **I whisper, pointing my wand at his forehead, aiming for the mole right above his left eyebrow I so badly want to kiss. Snow’s tortured expression instantly relaxes; his worried brow unfurrows, his tight grip on his bed sheets loosens, and he lets out a soft, relieved sigh. 

I crawl under my covers and cocoon myself in my thick wool blankets, feeling shameful and horribly exposed in the black darkness of our bedroom. 

I said that last time was the last time. Maybe the first time I used the spell was justified; he was screaming, after all. It was two weeks ago, after he had come back from one of his sessions with the Mage. He's been to more and more of them this year, and he always comes back looking drained. His nightmares are getting worse, and I don't know if it's from whatever misadventures the Mage is forcing him to partake in— hunting goblins or slaying dragons or killing whatever beasts Chosen Ones are expected to take care of— or if it's whatever happened to him at the end of last term, that night him and Bunce came into the dining hall looking fresh off the set of The Shining.

I smelled him before I saw him. His distinct scent: sweet and savory, like cinnamon and bacon. Like something I'd gladly eat. I think my heart skipped a beat when he stumbled into the dining hall. When I met his eyes, he seemed so breakable for once. I've never seen him look so human. He's always so _ alive— _ but that was the first time he seemed so mortal. Less supernova and more seventeen year old boy. Supernaturally gorgeous, too courageous for his own good, noble as knight— but just a boy. 

He's come back this year with that vulnerability. I see it almost every night, when he's sleeping. 

The first time I cast the spell, it was the first night of the term. His whimpers woke me; I'm far too attuned to him at the beginning of fall, after two months of missing the sound of his breathing. As his cries became yells, the room began to warm like a furnace, rising in degree with every miserable noise Snow let out. I’m fairly certain that he would have accidentally lit the whole building on fire if I hadn’t used the spell. I put a silencing charm on our bedroom _ years _ago— Dev and Niall are directly below us, and they said they couldn't stand listening to me yell at Snow for leaving a towel on the ground or Snow scream accusations of my plotting any longer— so I knew no one was going to come for us. 

I did the first thing I could think of: I concentrated the full force of my magic to cast "**sweet dreams**" on him, and the strangled scream died in his throat. His face relaxed, and he rolled over to his side to face me, and within a minute he was drooling on his pillow. He slept peacefully for the rest of the night. (I know, because I watched him for hours after. Until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.)

It's an unbearably sentimental spell. One I had almost forgotten about until I'd stayed with Fiona for the end of the summer. (She showed up and kidnapped me as I was getting ready to go to the Club to meet Dev for tennis, the supremely rude wench.) She claimed it was because she needed a drinking buddy. But, really, it was because she wanted to warn me that the Veil was thinning this year, and that my mother might come to me. 

_ Tasha will want to see how much trouble her son has turned out to be, _Fiona said with an uncharacteristically soft smile and an absentminded flick of her cigarette into her ashtray. 

I didn't bother saying the dead only come back to visit the living, not the technically dead. (Hell, maybe she'll come visit Snow. He's got so much life; he must have got my share of it.) 

The night she warned me about the Veil, my dreams took me back to the nursery— except this time, I wasn't an innocent baby anymore. I was me now— a monster, an abomination. It wasn't a faceless, nameless vampire that killed my mother this time— it was _ me _ , it was _ my fangs _ and I was the one who tore at my mother's throat and I was the one who tasted my mother's blood under my tongue and I'm a monster so I even liked the taste and it was _ my fault _ and then everything was on fire, the room was being consumed, _ I _was being consumed until—

Until it wasn't. One moment I was in my own personal hell, and the next I was sitting by the creek behind my house. My mother used to take me down there when I was a child, and she'd spell butterflies to fly over my head, and I'd giggle as I tried to catch them. I looked down at my hands, and they were the right color— the golden brown of the Egyptian Pitches rather than the ghostly pale of vampires. 

I turned and there was Snow— sitting under an English oak tree with his blinding smile. The one I see him giving Bunce and Wellbelove sometimes, the one he gives to those he loves. Except this time he was looking at _ me. _

"Basilton," he said softly, my name foreign on his lips, and all my former fear from my nightmare was forgotten. He avoids saying my name— he'll snarl _ you _ or _ Pitch _ or, if I'm lucky, _ Baz _ , but I haven't heard him say my full name since we were first years. He mispronounced it as _ Bay-sil _, like how Americans pronounce the herb, and I bit his head off for it. If my memory serves me, I believe I said that he sounded like a chavvy gremlin, and no wonder he can't make a simple warming spell work if he can't even _ speak _properly and, well. I said a bunch of awful things until he cried and locked himself in the bathroom. I think it was only our third week of the term. 

"Simon," I responded in the dream, and reached for him. I enjoyed the warm press of the sun on my skin with him until the morning light. 

Fiona tried to be nonchalant about it the next day, but I know she must have spelled me. She was casual— too casual. She forgot to make fun of me for my bedhead, so I knew something was up. I realized she must have cast **Sweet Dreams **on me when I thought through the dream a bit more, and the way the air smelled a bit like Fireball whiskey and nicotine, the way Fiona's magic smells. Plus, that's the place the dream took me when I was a child, since it's my favourite place. It would take me there with my mum then, since she was my favourite person. Though, I have a new favourite person now. 

I shouldn't have been so surprised that the spell has worked so well when I've tried it on Simon. **Sweet Dreams** only works on the person the castor wants to protect the most in this world, and the more you want to protect the person, the better the spell works. (His happy dreams are nearly instantaneous when I cast.)

But there's no need for it now. I really don’t need to be spelling his dreams pleasant _ every single night _ when he's not in danger of going off. But it’s been addicting, since that first time, to know that I’m helping him in some way. When the sun comes up in the morning, he won’t know it, but I’ll be the reason he doesn’t have purple bags under his eyes. I can show him how much I love him without having to reveal a thing. 

But last night, as I was falling asleep, I heard him whispering. My heart stopped, because I thought that he woke up and that he was talking to me. Only for a moment, though. When I turned to face him, his eyes were closed, and he had a small smile on his face, and I realized he was just dreaming. 

Now I have his soft confession stuck in a loop in my head.

_ "I love you." _

That's when I realized, I must be spelling him into dreaming about Agatha fucking Wellbelove. 

Fuck my life.   
  


* * *

**Simon**

“Baz is plotting something,” I say as soon as Penny sits beside me at our usual table. I've been waiting for her for twenty minutes; I've already devoured six and a half scones. 

“Say it isn’t so,” Penny responds with deadpan sarcasm, her expression bored as she nibbles on the edge of her toast.

“Penny, I’m serious.”

“You’re always serious when it comes to Baz. But, unfortunately—or rather, _ fortunately_— you’re very rarely right.”

“It’s not that I’m not right; it’s that I don’t always have proof,” I correct her. 

“Is he talking about Baz again?” Agatha asks as she slides into the bench next to me. “Simon, it’s not even eight a.m. yet.”

"And he's already plotting,_" _I say. Agatha pours almond milk into her coffee, unfazed. "And he's gone too far this time."

I wait for them to ask me what he did to me. They don't.

"Don't you want to know what he's been doing?" I ask, my voice whiny even to my own ears. 

"Get proof that he's plotting, and we'll help you," Agatha says, and then adds, sarcastically, "I'll light up the pyre myself."

I frown, and want to start an argument about how I'm absolutely positive that Baz is a vampire. But Agatha is right, it _ is _ pretty early. I don't want to get in a fight with Agatha before she's even had her morning coffee— _ that's _ always a recipe for disaster— especially when she's just started sitting with us again since our break-up. 

To be fair, I was a bit of a prick to her when she dumped me. I accused her of mugging me off to snog Baz, and that's how she told me she didn't want to snog _ anyone. _And I got a long, well-deserved lecture on asexuality, which ended with her storming off and me feeling like a right prat. She's only just forgiven me for my insensitivity, and I don't want to ruin it by bringing up Baz too much. (Though, I haven't met my quota for the week yet, so I can bring him up later.) (At least, I can to Penny.) 

"Fine," I say, and change the subject. “Penny, can you **Double or Nothing** your notes in Magic Words later? The Mage wants to meet with me today.”

“Again?” Penny asks. She seems to be trying to hide her exasperation. 

My sessions with the Mage are his condition for letting me stay at Watford. On the first day back from summer holidays, he insisted that it wasn't safe at Watford, that I needed to leave to be protected from 'outside forces.' I was arguing with him about it—Watford is my _ home; _there's no better place for me— and I thought I was going to go off right there at the top of Mummers Tower, when Baz came sauntering into our bedroom. He gave the Mage a cool, appraising look as he came in, and the Mage looked unnerved to see him. Surprised, almost— which didn't make much sense to me, seeing that the bedroom is both of ours. Though, I suppose Baz did come back to school a day earlier than he usually does, so maybe it was that. 

The Mage left my bedroom after Baz showed up, and didn't bring up my leaving Watford again. Though he has insisted that we increase my training. It's been… well, it's been shit, really.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to meet him after lunch."

She purses her lips in disapproval. "I don't see how any of his spells are supposed to _ work. _ I've never even heard of most of them, and I couldn't find any books on them in the Watford library." 

I shrug. "Maybe they're rare ones. They all sound old to me." 

"What was the one he used the other day? The Bible quote?" Penny asks inquisitively. 

"**Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.**" I recite. I've heard that one all week; it's stuck in my brain. 

"See, I don't know what that one's supposed to do. Unless he thinks the Humdrum is a necromancer? Has he said anything about resurrection spells?"

"He hasn't said anything about that." He hasn't said much about _ anything_, really. Just calls me to his office, asks me a bunch of pointless questions without answering any of mine, and casts a bunch of spells on me. "Plus, didn't you say those were impossible? I could have sworn you said magic couldn't bring back the dead."

"Well, no, it shouldn't be able to like, make someone alive again. But the normal rules obviously don't apply to the Humdrum. If you could find a way to keep the Veil open, maybe…"

"The Veil?" I ask her.

"You know, the Veil," she says with an explanatory wave of her hand.

"I _ don't _know." I can never keep track of what's real and what I've just read in Harry Potter. Even after seven years in the Magickal world, I'm still playing catch up. 

"It's the barrier between the living world and the dead one. You know, us and ghosts."

"_Ghosts _ are _ real_?" I splutter, almost dropping my scone. 

"Yes!" Penny says in a tone that makes me think she wants to add '_obviously._' "Honestly, don't you pay any attention in Magickal History?"

"You _ know _ I don't." Though, perhaps I should. Did I really miss Professor Berry talking about _ ghosts? _It must be because it's our last class before dinner, and I'm always too hungry by then to properly think. 

"Haven't you noticed the Visitings? Didn't you see Keris crying the last week? Her father came to visit her, that's why her and Trixie have barely left the room all week. Every twenty years, dead people can talk to the living if they have something really important to say."

"Oh," I say. I think I _ have _heard of this. I thought it was just a part of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, though. "What did Keris's dad say?"

"Who knows? All I know is that I've practically got another roommate now," Penny responds with far less sensitivity than the situation seems to call for. 

"Hm," I say thoughtfully, and shove another scone in my mouth, and let my eyes wander where they always do, right to... 

Baz, who rapidly turns his head towards his plate and begins absentmindedly playing with the cereal in the bowl. He's pretending he wasn't just staring at me. I watch his spoon stir around the bowl in front of him and wait for him to feel my eyes on him. (I _ hate _when he ignores me). After a minute he caves, and lifts his eyes to sneer at me. I give him a scowl back, and he huffs at that, causing his lips to pout out a little. The image of his full lips makes all my recent dreams pop back into my head in full force.

My skin prickles. I don't want to think about the dreams during the day—I don't even want to be having them at night— but they keep slipping into my thoughts. The stark difference between my Dream Baz and the Real Baz is jarring. 

I shudder and break our eye contact, thinking about the one last night. It was the worst of them all. 

I was back in Lancashire, staring into the cold, dead eyes of the Humdrum. He's got my own eyes… but he's not me. He just _ looks _ like me for some reason. In my nightmare, he kept summoning different people to my side: Penny, Agatha, Ebb, the Mage… He brought everyone I cared about, and I couldn't stop him. The Humdrum was doing awful things to them—making them bleed from their pores, causing their bodies to convulse with horrible seizures, inflicting pain that caused their mouths to open into silent, tortured screams. 

'_Stop, stop, make it stop!' _I screamed and screamed, but the Humdrum just smiled. 

_ 'You're doing this,' _ he said, '_I'm you.' _

I tried to protest, but that's when he summoned Baz.

It shocked me at first; I thought: _ why would the Humdrum summon Baz, of all people, why I would even care if Baz got hurt, why he would even think this would torture me— _

That is, until Baz started screaming. Then it was so awful— I couldn't think at all. 

_ 'No, please, no,' _ I begged, willing it to stop. Watching Baz—_Basilton Pitch_— on his knees, watching his mouth fill with fangs the way it does when he has nightmares, watching him tug at his dark hair in agony.

It was horrifying—but then, suddenly, it was over. 

In an instant's time, I was transported back to Mummers. The morning light shone in through our open window, and I had my arms wrapped around somebody. 

Not somebody—Baz. 

I'd been there before—in bed with Baz in my dreams— so it didn't freak me out. (For some reason, it never does.) (Not until I wake up, that is.) 

'Good morning, darling,' I said, because it felt like the right thing to say. 

Dream Baz turned to face me. His hair fell in a lazy swoop in front of his face, just the way I liked it. He pouted at me. 

'Quiet, darling,' he said. 'I'm trying to sleep.'

His voice was irritable and argumentative, but it was just for show. So I kissed him. Dream Baz melted into my kiss, and didn't protest anymore. 

We stayed like that for the rest of my dream. Kissing in our bedroom, his arms wrapped around my neck and mine pulling his waist close. 

When Dream Baz said he loved me, I didn't hesitate to say it back. 

And then I woke up to the Real Baz slamming his wardrobe shut. He was scowling at me as he put his tie on. 

"Good morning,d—Baz," I said, still hazy from my dream, forgetting that we don't greet one another like _ that _ in the morning. 

"It'll be a good morning when I finally kill you, so I can wake to something other than your incessant snoring," he said.

The room smelled like Baz's magic—like gunpowder— and my face felt a bit like I was healing from a grease burn. Like it does when Baz casts a spell on me. 

I look back up at Baz now in the dining hall, and he's looking at me with his head cocked slightly and his eyes a question. I feel my blush heat my face as I think about how his voice sounded in my dreams. Soft and raspy and not at all like himself when he called me 'darling.’

But that's not the real Baz Pitch. Baz Pitch would never call me darling. 

I don't know how, but these dreams have to be his fault.

"Simon?" Agatha says, looking at me curiously. Fuck, I think that she was saying something to me. "What do you think?"

"Um… yes?" 

"Your answer to 'what kind of dog should I ask my parents for Christmas?' is yes?" 

"Um… no?" 

I expect her to get mad or look at me like I've done something irreversibly wrong. But she doesn't—she surprises me by laughing, open-mouthed and carefree. (She never would have laughed at the fact that I wasn't paying attention to her when we were together.) (It's seeming like a better and better idea we broke up every day.) I laugh back just as easily. 

I feel Baz's eyes on me, and I glance quickly over to him again. He's grimacing, and I want to go over there and wipe that look off his face. (Doesn't he know his looks would be much improved if he _ smiled _for once?) But breakfast's nearly over, so I just ignore him in favor of going back over to the buffet line for another scone. 

Figuring out what Baz is up to is important— but not more important than getting my share of sour cherry scones.   
  


* * *

_ I don't know how long I can do this, _I think as I drag myself up the stairs with a Herculean effort. I'm taking the steps one by one, barely lifting my feet as I bring myself to my bedroom, cursing the fact that I live at the very top of this damn tower. I'd almost give up the en suite right now for a room on the first floor. 

I finally bring myself to the top and trip over myself at the threshold. Baz is on his bed, cross-legged with his hair up in a ponytail and a novel open on his lap. He raises a single eyebrow at my clumsiness, but I ignore him, plopping facedown on my own bed and pointedly not groaning the way I desperately want to right now. (I can't show Baz any weakness.) (Any _ more _weakness.)

"Rough day?" Baz says in his signature sardonic tone. 

Rough day doesn't sum up the half of it. 

The Mage says this is supposed to be making me stronger. _ You have to learn to protect yourself from undue influence, Simon, _ he says. _ If you can't make yourself safe here, I'll have to send you elsewhere. _

I don't want to leave. But, at this very moment, I don't particularly want to stay. 

"Piss off," I say into my pillow. My voice is muffled by the cotton fabric in my mouth, but I know Baz hears me, because he scoffs indignantly at my poor comeback. 

"Seriously, Snow. What is the Mage _ doing _to you?" There's an indecipherable edge to his voice that makes me turn to look at him. He's sneering at me, as usual. I'm tired, so it angers me more than his cruel expressions usually do. 

"Wouldn't you like to know? Going to report back to the Old Families what we're doing?" I say, trying to emulate his mocking tone, though I think I just sound like a petulant child. I'm too drained to be properly menacing. 

“You’ve got blood on your shirt,” he responds, ignoring my accusation.

“Alright," I answer. I know that already, obviously. I'm not as dumb as Baz makes me out to be. 

“Why do you have blood on your shirt?”

“Why do you care?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. 

“I don’t,” he says with cold indifference. “You could bleed out for all I care. I just thought the Mage cared about The Chosen One a little more than this,” he says with a condescending wave to all of me. 

_ I thought he did, too_, a small voice in the back of my head points out. I ignore it, and look up to glare at Baz as harshly as I can manage. (He, predictably, looks unimpressed.)

"I'm on to you, you know,” I say. He turns his nose up at me, and my chest floods with white hot rage at his composure. 

"Aren't you always?" he sneers. "What have I done this time, Snow? Have you got a hangnail I'm somehow responsible for?"

"You're fucking with my dreams, you absolute prick," I snap. 

Baz's facial expression doesn't change, but I see he clenches his jaw tightly. It makes the veins in his neck stick out prominently and his jawline tighter—and I know I'm right. That's his tell— it's how I know when I'm getting to him. (It's the way he reacts every time I point out he's a vampire.) 

"I don't know what you're talking about," he lies, his voice flat.

I growl and stand up so we're nose to nose. (Well, technically, nose to chin. That bastard's got three inches on me.) "You're a bloody _ liar_, Basilton Pitch."

His dark eyebrows raise marginally and his grey eyes flood with emotion briefly. (I'm right, I'm right, I _ know _I'm right.) As quickly as the surprise flashed across his face, it's gone. "You don't know a damn thing about me," he growls through gritted teeth.

"I know you better than _ anyone,_" I insist, because it's true. He always takes his tea with two sugars, and never with milk. He special orders his shampoo from France, and it smells like cedar and bergamot. He's the one who tried to get all the merewolves killed fourth year by putting a metal pole in the middle of the lake during a lightning storm, because he hates those things almost as much as he hates me. I know he's claustrophobic, because one time we accidentally got locked into the second floor coat closet, and his breathing became fast and irregular, and when Ms. Possibelf finally opened the door, he practically fell down in his rush to get out. 

I know he wants to hit me right now, because he's only breathing through his nose, the way he always does before one of our fistfights. 

And I know he's the one who's making me dream of kissing him. 

I grab him by the front of his T-shirt and push him against the wall. (_Now _I’ve got his attention.) His eyes go wide and he moves to try to push me off him, but I’ve fought him too many times, so I see it coming and grab his wrists before he can shove me off. I pin them by his head and he snarls.

“Tell me what you’re cursing me with,” I demand.

“I don’t know what you’re bloody talking about,” he spits. 

“I know you’re casting something on me when I’m asleep. What’s the spell?” 

“You’re delusional,” he snaps.

I crowd him, bringing myself inches from his face to intimidate him. 

“Tell. Me.” I demand, looking him straight in the eyes.

I’m so close to him that I see his pupils dilate and I feel his cool breath on my face when he exhales sharply. The air becomes electric, the way it always does when we’re fighting, my magic warming up the bedroom. But this time, it’s more than just hot rage in the air. There’s something more—a palpable passionate emotion that fills the room. My eyes are drawn to Baz’s lips against my will— they’re parted slightly and as pink as they are in my dreams. They look soft and kissable. The images that are haunting my dreams float into my head, and my body becomes flushed with embarrassment at all the false memories I have of kissing my sworn enemy. 

I push myself back from him, my heart hammering in my ears. I think he realizes how weird and charged the moment we just shared was, because he looks almost dumb right now with how striken his expression is. Wordlessly— without so much as an insult or sneer— Baz walks out our bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him.

It takes longer than I’d ever admit to anyone before I'm finally unfrozen from the shock of that moment.

Feeling like I just ran a marathon, I walk into the bathroom to wash off the day. Under the hot water of the shower, I try to clear my thoughts of everything— of the Mage and my dreams and Baz Pitch. But the blood caked under my nails reminds me of the uncontrollable bloody nose that started when the Mage cast **Give Up The Ghost**. And the problem growing below my waist reminds me of Basilton Pitch— the sweet, soft one that exists only in my wildest dreams. I thoroughly wash the blood down the drain and avoid touching between my legs, but I still step out of the shower with the same level of anxiety I had before I bathed. 

I crawl into my sheets in nothing but my pants, feeling hot and itchy and uncomfortable from the day's events. Even though I took nearly an hour in the shower, Baz still hasn't returned to our bedroom, but I decide not to let that stop me from going to sleep. I toss and turn in my attempt to relax enough to drift into sleep. I try to pretend I'm unbothered by the fact that it’s past curfew and Baz is still gone. 

When I finally do fall asleep, I dream of blood, and screams, and the Humdrum, but Dream Baz doesn't ever show up to save me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! :) leave kudos/ comment if you liked this!
> 
> come find me on [Tumblr](https://annabellelux.tumblr.com) where I post a ton about Carry On/ my WIPs/ queer lit in general :)


	2. somebody pinch me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the kind words on the last chapter! and special thanks to [@thedaggerrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedfetish/pseuds/thedaggerrose) for beta-reading this! 
> 
> heads up: for the rest of this fic, there will be some non-explicit sexual content (mostly just sexual jokes, but some sexual desire as well) 
> 
> hope you all enjoy!

**Baz**

Snow is exhausted.

I’m trying not to notice how poorly he seems to be doing, but it’s hard to miss the Chosen One causing the fire alarm to go off after he's fallen asleep in Magickal History.

I'm trying not to think about whether he's still having nightmares, feeling an odd mix of anxiety, guilt, and annoyance at the prospect.

It’s been eight days since I cast **Sweet Dreams **on him last. Eight days since I stopped sleeping in our bedroom. Since I stopped picking on Snow in lectures and sneering at him across the dining hall and sending his girlfriend blank stares.

I wanted the distance to make Snow think he’s just imagined my interference in his dreams. I thought, maybe if I left him alone that he would drop it. Pretend that whatever happened between us last Thursday didn't happen.

(What _ did _ happen? What _ was _ that?)

I thought to myself: _ out of sight, out of mind, right? _

I'm mad to think that tactic would ever work on Snow, though. He seems more suspicious of me than ever. He royally messed up an **Out, Out, Damned Spot** in Magick Words today, and then immediately turned to me to wait for my reaction. When I just avoided his gaze (and the fact that the carpet stain was rapidly _ expanding _ instead of _ evaporating_) in favor of examining my fingernails, the room went up ten degrees in ten seconds. Bunce took him by the elbow and escorted him outside as everyone around him began to cough at the hazy smoke that clouded around Snow.

My ignoring him is only making him more livid, but I don’t suppose I have another choice.

He knows I was the one spelling away his nightmares. I'm not sure what exactly about making him dream about Agatha Wellbelove has got him so cross, but I'm too embarrassed by what spell I was using to find out. Crowley, if he's this upset that I've been casting on him at all, I can't imagine what he'd do if he found out how sickeningly tender of a spell **Sweet Dreams **is. Not even Snow is too thick not to realize what that particular spell means about my feelings for him.

I walk into Niall and Dev's room and plop myself down onto their beanbag. I'm not exactly sure how they managed to get the thing into Mummer's undetected, but I'm not complaining. I've been curling up on it like a cat to sleep every night.

They take one look at my deep scowl and exchange dark looks.

"We heard Snow almost went off in Magick Words today," Niall gets straight to the point, disentangling himself from his sickenly domestic position beside Dev on their bed. (I'm happy for them that they've gotten together, honestly, but it is a bit uncomfortable to be the third wheel to their relationship. It just reminds me of how I'm cursed with unrequited love for my own roommate. I doubt there's a universe where this deal would work out as spectacularly for me as it has for Dev and Niall.) 

"Snow is a right idiot," I complain sullenly. 

"People are saying it was because of you," Dev says bluntly.

I let out an indignant huff. "Was _ not _ ," I insist, though it may as well have been. I guess _ not _ insulting Snow is as an affront to him as insulting him is. "He went and riled _ himself _up. He's got the temper of a spoiled toddler." Niall opens his mouth to speak, but I'm not done. "Snow's always got to blame everything wrong in his life on me. If there's a damn thing in his life going south, then it's has to be a part of one of my master plots.The wanker can't stub his toe without cursing my name, I swear to fuck."

"Is that what happened?" Dev asks. The two of them are looking at me skeptically. (They seem to be buying my Snow rants less and less over the years.) "He stubbed his toe, so you decided to hide out in our bedroom all week?"

I can tell he wants me to tell him why I've been insisting on sleeping in their bedroom. When they asked, I just said that I needed a break from Snow. I've done that before, once or twice, so they didn't think much of it at first. But they're getting increasingly curious about this as they realize this is more than just one of our many spats. 

I do what I do best, and deflect. "Yes, at the very least until his bruise goes away. Four, five months tops."

"Does it have to do with Wellbelove?" Niall asks. "You shouldn't have pretended to be interested in her all last year, you know."

I scowl at him. "Well, you should've told me that before I did it."

"I did. Multiple times."

I let out a loud, long-suffering sigh. "That is beside the point. The point is, Snow is a plague on Magick society, and I'm moving into you lads' bedroom for the rest of the year."

"Yeah. About that," Dev says pointedly, "you need to start sleeping in your own room again." 

I sit up so suddenly I nearly give myself whiplash. "What? Why?"

"We think… maybe it's time you make amends with Snow. I mean, it's our last year. Aren't you sick of fighting with him?" Niall asks. 

_ Yes, _ I think, _ I am so exhausted of it. _ But I still narrow my eyes in suspicion.

"You've never minded before." 

"Sure, we have," Niall says with a too casual wave. 

"No, you haven't," I insist, and turn to face Niall. "You've come up with most of the pranks yourself. Merlin, I would have never thought of spelling those white hares to follow him around all of sixth year myself." 

It was hilarious. White hares are bad omens, so he thought he had been cursed. He was a paranoid wreck, chasing the rabbits around with his sword every time he saw them, even if he had to run out in the middle of Possibelf’s class. It was the perfect revenge for all those times I went to bed thirsty in fifth year because Snow was thumping around the Catacombs. 

"Well… don't you miss your bedroom? It's the nicest one at Watford."

"You bloody well know that Snow's presence makes it the worst room at Watford."

"Yeah, but, I mean, don't you—" 

"For fucks' sake, Niall. Just come out and say it," Dev huffs out in exasperation. "Baz, you're cockblocking us." 

I open my mouth to make an argument, and then close it abruptly. I'm ashamed at how embarrassed I feel at the mention of sex (I am _ such _a virgin.) 

"Crowley, Dev," Niall swears.

"What? He wasn't going to catch on himself," Dev says to Niall with his hands thrown up, expression unperturbed.

"You're sexiling me?" I complain, my voice a little too high. 

"You can't technically sexile someone who shouldn't even be sleeping in this room."

I scowl. "You're traitors."

Neither of them looks particularly upset by my accusation. 

"Sorry," Dev says, not sounding the least bit sorry. "Go have sex with Snow in your own bedroom." 

"I- I would never- I-" Dammit, they _ are _ catching on. I don't have a comeback, so I just say, "I hate you both," before storming out of their bedroom in a huff.

I try to shake off my embarrassment as I head to the staircase to my room. I'm dragging my feet with such exaggerated reluctance that some of the other boys are blatantly staring as I make my way to the top of the tower. I sneer at Gareth after I hear him cast a **Hear No Evil ** with a sharp hip thrust towards my room's direction ( _ stupid _ fucking magic belt). It's superfluous at this point— I've cast a hundred **Mum's The Word** on the room already. Though Gareth's totally justified in his assessment of the situation; it goes without saying that Snow and I are about to have it out. (It's obvious to everyone in the building that we're fighting— I used the _ communal shower _ the other day just to avoid him, for Crowley's sake.) After all these years of it, everyone knows to steer clear of the shitshow that is our rivalry.

I linger with my hand at the doorknob for a moment. I pause to internally curse myself for being such a dramatic wanker, and for getting myself into this situation in the first place. Then, I open the door. 

Snow startles up from his desk chair. He squares his shoulders like he's preparing for battle, one hand on his hip like he's going about to call the Sword of Mages. I cut him off before he can jump in with his classic-Snow self-righteous bravado. 

"No need to bow down, Snow. I'm not the bloody Queen," I say dismissively, like I haven't been avoiding this room like it's infected with the goblin's plague. 

"I-uh-you!" He stutters, trying to get his footing in this conversation. (He won't. I can't ever let him have the upper hand.) 

"Yes, me," I say. I'm pleased to hear my voice sounds much more casual than I'm feeling. I feel his presence now even more than I usually do— I can taste the bonfire smoke of his magic, I can see the subtle way he's tapping his middle finger anxiously on his outer thigh, I can hear his too-fast heartbeat going at least a hundred beats per minute— and he's got me set as on edge as I've apparently got him. But of the two of us, I'm the far superior actor. "No need to work yourself into a strop."

His face falls into a scowl and he balls his fists. "Where have you been?"

"Here and there," I answer in an offhand voice. 

He doesn't like that. He growls at me in a low voice, and takes a step forward. I take an instinctive step back, thinking about the last time he got into my personal space—the bittersweet memory of his warm hands on my wrist and hot breath on my face. He looks surprised by my retreat; I'm a Pitch, and we're not ones to back down from a fight. But, I'm also a vampire, and if I let Snow's fire touch me, I'll light up like a firework. 

I think the memory comes to him too, because he goes red. The only good thing about being a vampire is that I can't blush the way Snow is right now. (Though, even if I were alive, I doubt my flushes would be as showy as his are. The way his blood gathers at his sternum and makes it way up his neck and ears and cheeks is practically a performance. An infuriating, tempting, erotic performance.)

"F-fuck you, Pitch," he stutters, and I almost let out an audible sigh of relief. If he's resorted to that insult, that means he's all but accepted this conversation as a loss on his part. 

"Very well, if that's all," I say, quickly grabbing my pyjamas and sauntering into the washroom with false swagger before he can get his blustering confidence back. 

I lock the door behind me— physically and with a **Man The Barricades**— and turn the shower handle onto the hottest setting. When I step under the scalding spray of water, it's easy to forget what kept me from the room for so long. The water pressure in the communal showers is shite and it's uncomfortable showering a few feet from a half a dozen other blokes. Especially at times like this, when I am getting inexplicably hard. At least, I pretend it's inexplicable and it has nothing to do with the way Snow's skin looked just now—tawny and smooth and blushing. I pretend, when my hand travels southward, that I'm thinking of some nameless man. But this allegedly anonymous man has three moles on his right cheek, eyes the color of Chelsea's football jerseys, and a mess of unruly bronze curls, so I'm not fooling anyone, least of all myself.

When I'm finished, I feel the familiar, specific shame that accompanies wanking over someone who's just outside the bathroom door. The evidence is washed down the drain, but the bliss of my aftershocks are soured by the pangs of guilt that linger for a while longer. 

I'm slow to make my way out of the washroom, dragging out my nighttime routine far more than usual. But after I've flossed, exfoliated, blow-dried my hair, and clipped my fingernails, I finally unspell the locked door with **A Golden Key Can Open Any Door **and send up a silent prayer that Snow's fucked off to the library or the Cloisters or, really, anywhere other than here. 

As fate (and my tragically bad luck) would have it, Snow's laying on his bed shirtless with his Latin textbook on his lap. I resist the urge to throw a cheap taunt his way—'_Really, Snow, you think you can manage to learn Latin? You can't even properly speak English'_— and avert my eyes from his bare chest in an act of self-preservation. I grab my own Latin book, even though I'm two weeks ahead on the reading, just to have something to do with my hands and my eyes and my attention.

But, Crowley. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife right now. There's been a million awkward silences between us over the past seven years. The time after our first fist fight, when he was still covered in blood and sniffling back tears. The time after I stole Agatha away at Winter Ball, making direct eye contact with a livid Snow every time I twirled her on the dance floor. Fuck, we can make any old Tuesday evening uncomfortable at the best of times, the way we tiptoe around each other. But this silence is more than that; it's heavy with unspoken words and anxious suspense. 

Snow's the brave one, so he breaks it. 

"Um," he says. 

I say nothing. I keep my eyes glued to the book, doing translations in my head, pretending I'm more interested in my homework than Simon Snow trying to form a sentence.

"Baz?" he tries again.

I consider ignoring him, but if I've learned anything this week, it is that the Chosen One doesn't know how to be ignored. 

"Can I help you, Snow?" I say sardonically, in a tone that heavily suggests that helping him is at the very bottom of my list of things to do, right behind getting getting a colonoscopy and grabbing a pint with the Mage.

"No, I mean, well, I just wanted to say. Um," he pauses.

"I don't have all day, Mage's Heir."

His fists clench his book tighter. (Though he hasn't turned a page since I sat down on my bed.) "I'm trying to apologize, arsehole." 

I don't answer— not because I'm purposefully ignoring him, but because I don't know what to say. In the seven years we've known each other, there hasn't been one apology exchanged. (Not even when teachers would try to force us as first years to "just say sorry." The two of us would start a staring— or more accurately glaring— contest, until the teacher got so uncomfortable, they would just let the two of us go.)

"I won't shove you again. I shouldn't have done it in the room. You know, the Anathema, and all," he scratches his neck uncomfortably as I give him a blank stare. "So... yeah. I won't touch you again."

This… is so uncomfortable.

"Very well," I say, in a tone that's supposed to shut down this conversation.

"You don't have to sleep somewhere else, I mean. You can stay," he says, before— _ Aleister fucking Crowley _— biting his bottom lip, uncharacteristically timid. 

If I didn't know any better, I'd almost think Snow _ missed _ me. But I don't let myself go down that heart-sickenly appealing road, because I do know better, and there's no universe in which Simon Snow would be sad to see me go. He was probably just anxious about not having me in his sights, thinking I was off plotting some horrible end for him. 

"I know I can stay here. It's _ my _room too, you know," I snap at him, and he releases his chapped lip from his teeth and frowns. 

"Well, whatever," he grumbles, looking back down at his Latin textbook. 

I tear my eyes from his mouth to make myself pay attention to my textbook too, but my fragile concentration is broken. I spend the rest of the evening listening to Snow's heartbeat.

* * *

I sneak into our bedroom as soundlessly as I can as to not alert Snow to my presence. I've just slipped my pyjama shirt over my head when I hear his voice.

"You were nearly late," he whispers from his bed. I freeze; I thought he was asleep. If I knew he wasn't, I would have gone into the en suite to change into my pyjamas. Though, I doubt he caught a glance at me; it's too dark. 

"Yes," I whisper back in a hushed tone.

"There's only five minutes until curfew," he elaborates.

"Yes," I repeat.

He huffs at my refusal to give him any more than a one-word answer, and rolls over to turn his back to me. I don't mind; these days, I prefer the times I don't have to look at his face before bed. 

It's stupid to be feeling so guilty about refusing to cast **Sweet Dreams** on him. I'm not his handler, for Merlin's sake; it's not like it's my responsibility to take care of him. He's still having nightmares near nightly, and even if it upsets me, I shouldn't— I _ can't _ — be spelling him anymore. But I also can't listen to his pathetic whimpers either, so I've been casting **Fall On Deaf Ears **on myself every night. It works well, as long as I don't make the mistake of looking at Snow. I did that the first time I spelled myself deaf, and I found his facial expressions are plenty expressive enough, even without the sound effects. 

So, I sleep facing the wall, and on nights I get lucky Snow's facing the wall as well, and I do my best not to think about how he's being tormented every night. 

I do have my own nightmares to think about, after all. I mean, they're not a fourth as frequent as Snow's, and I don't make such a production of it even when I do get them, but they're still plenty unpleasant. 

I sneak my last look of the night at Snow. He's curled up on his side in the fetal position, hugging himself in a protective gesture. I can hear his breaths, shallow and rapid, and I can already tell it's going to be a night where he takes an hour to finally fall asleep.

I wonder, not for the first time, what his nightmares are about. What scares a boy who slayed a dragon at eleven? What scares someone who's strong enough to beat a chimera and noble enough to save his nemesis from getting torn apart in the process? 

The phrases he utters in his sleep— the desperate "please"s and the frightened "no"s— don't give me any clues. 

I want to ask him what happened to him and Bunce last spring. I want to let him open up and tell me his fears, and then I could stroke his soft curls and tell him that everything was going to be alright. I want to shield him from everything that's happened to him, everything that is happening to him, from everything that is going to happen to him. 

My last thought is of protecting Simon Snow before I drift off to sleep, too tired to remember to cast a **Fall On Deaf Ears **on myself.   
  


* * *

I'm in the woods behind my house, the place where I met Simon when Fiona cast **Sweet Dreams **on me last month. Except this isn't a dream; it's very decidedly a nightmare.

Because everything— the oak trees, the grassy field, the shallow creek— is aflame.

I drop my arm and shake it, expecting my wand to fall out of my sleeve— since that's where I always keep it— so that I can cast a **Make A Wish. **But today's apparently the one day I don't have my wand on me, because nothing drops from my shirtsleeve.

I turn, looking for a place to run, but I'm in the very center of the forest fire. The flames seem to rise with my panic, and soon enough I'm coughing from the thick smoke that poisons the air. I feel my fangs drop, the way they always do when I'm afraid, and I press my tongue to them to try and will them back into my skull. (That's never quite worked, but it doesn't keep me from trying.) 

From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of metal; I turn to see Snow running towards me with the sword of Mages raised above his head and his eyes filled to the brim with frenetic intensity. For one foolish moment, I think to myself, _ I'm going to be okay. Snow's here to save me. _

That is, until he tries to run the sword through me. 

I curse and just barely dodge death at the Chosen One's hands. I bare my fangs, a predatory instinct, and Snow's face morphs from fanatical to repulsed. 

"Monster," he growls, and the accusation hurts more than I reckon the sword would have.

"No, I'm not a monster. I'm not," I argue with him desperately, not believing my own words as I say them. 

"Yes, you are," Snow spits, contempt in his tone and expression. "Face it, Pitch. You're an abomination. Your own mother would have killed you if she had the chance."

"No," I repeat. The fire's getting closer and closer now; it's avoiding Snow, making a beeline for me. 

"You're worthless," he continues. I cover my ears, but I can still hear his insults. _ Disgusting. Unlovable. Villain. _

_ Monster. _

The fire's licking at my heels, and I'm about to say _ fuck it _ and let it take me, when I hear a high, clear voice say my name.

Not just anyone's voice. _ My mother's voice. _

"Basilton, sweetheart. Basilton," she calls for me, and I look around wildly for her. 

"Mum?" I yell, looking around the burning forest for her. I can't find her anywhere. "Mum!" 

"Wake up, Basilton. Wake up. _ Wake up." _

I open my eyes and the forest disappears; I'm back in my bed in Mummer's Tower. 

_ Nightmare, _ I think to myself, blood roaring in my ears. _ It was just a nightmare. _

Then, I hear her voice again: "Basilton." 

I look at the foot of my bed, and there she is. My mother, in the red robes she died in. My mother, with my grey eyes. My mother, a ghost in my bedroom.

My mother, who came for me.

Before now, I refused to let myself picture this moment, because I thought it was impossible. Despite Fiona's confidence, I never thought she'd be able to come to a vampire. I didn't think she'd even want to visit me; I didn't think she'd want to see what a monster I've become. 

But she's here— she's really, honestly here. And I wish I'd imagined it at least once. Because I don't know what to say now. 

My jaw is agape and I'm just staring. Her eyes are filling up with tears and my stomach jerks in alarm that she's come back to tell me to set myself on fire. 

But then she says, "Basilton, my little puff," and that fear dissipates.

"Mum," I choke out, my tears spilling over. She rushes over to my side and goes to brush my tears from my cheek in a motherly gesture I can hardly remember from my childhood. I know she's supposed to be cold— I know that ghosts are supposed to be freezing— but I'm a vampire, so she barely feels cool to me. 

"We don't have time for tears, my son," she says sternly, but affectionately, like the way she used to scold me for staying up past my bedtime to read my picture books with a flashlight under the covers. I know she has a time constraint— even powerful ghosts like her can only visit for a minute, two tops— but she still takes the time to place a loving kiss at my temple. "I've come back to give you a warning." 

My mind tries to wrap around this. "A warning?" 

"You're not safe here. The Mage— he has sinister plans at work. He will stop at nothing in his quest for power and control."

"I know, mother, the Old Families are resisting his tyrannical government—"

She holds up her hand to silence me, urgency in her eyes. She's already starting to blur at her edges, "It's more than that. He has messed with— is messing with— the balance of nature. He is a threat to magic as we know it." 

"What do you want me to do, mother?" I spit out as quickly as I can, tripping over my words in my rush to get them out. 

She— to my utter surprise— looks over at Snow. 

"The boy," she says, her voice becoming fainter and more desperate. "He's trying to use the boy to gain power. But he's making it worse. The Mage's hurting him, and blocking his mother from visiting him."

"His mother?" I ask, surprised. As far as everyone knows, Simon doesn't have a mother— let alone a Mage mother from across the Veil.

"Yes. And he's willing to go much further to stop her from visiting and to keep the boy in line. Promise that you will do whatever you can to stop his plans."

I'm nodding vigorously before she's even completed her sentence. "Yes, Mum. I promise." My voice cracks, so I repeat it, stronger the second time: "I promise."

"Protect yourself, son. Protect magic. I love you!" she screams, but it comes out as a whisper.

And as quickly as she came, she fades away, and she's gone. 

I lie down and cry for a very long time.   
  


* * *

I'm not sure how much time has passed— it could have been minutes or it could have been hours— when I hear Snow let out a familiar whine. 

He's crying silently in his sleep, his face wet and mouth open in a soundless scream. A voice at the very back of my head tells me to let it be, but a larger, much louder part of my brain yells at me to go to him.

I'm ripped open tonight, and I can't pretend to ignore him. 

I kneel at his bed, and drop my hand and—_there's _ my wand. I point it at his forehead just as he cries, _ "Baz." _

Oh, fuck. He's having a nightmare about me. 

I drop my wand as shame coils in my gut at the thought—are all of his nightmares about me? Am_ I _the one thing the Chosen One is afraid of? Am I the scariest thing in the world to the person I love the most? 

I'm frozen, throwing myself a magnificent pity party in my own head, trying to get the quiet voice in my head that originally told me to ignore him to speak up and force me back into my own bed, when Snow cries, "stop, stop, please." 

I think about my mother looking at Snow, and saying _ "The Mage's hurting him." _

I have to protect him. I have to at least try. I refocus my energy and point my wand at him again. 

"**Sweet Dreams,"** I cast, but he cries again. It was too tentative- too nervous. I have to _ really _ mean it. I can't be focused on my own mortification at being the subject of his nightmares or at what casting this spell means about my feelings. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you, _ I think so loudly I fear I'll wake him up with my internal declarations. _ I love you, you beautiful nightmare. I'll protect you, _I tell myself, willing it to be true. Willing myself to love him more than I hate myself. 

"**Sweet Dreams," **I try again, but with more feeling. 

He doesn't cry again. But he also doesn't turn over and start softly snoring, like he usually does. Instead, he opens his eyes with a loud gasp. 

I know I should run—I've been caught in the act. But I'm frozen on the spot, listening to his hummingbird heart beat wildly in his chest. The blood flows through his chest with a deafening, wet _ lub, dub, lub, dub, lub, dub. _His air is stuck in his throat, like he's choking on it. 

"Sn-" I begin to say, but my words are cut off by him grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me to his chest. 

**Simon**

Dream Baz is here to save me. 

He hasn’t come back in weeks. I was starting to fear he never would again. 

The familiar, comforting scent of cedar and bergamot fills my nostrils as I pull Dream Baz to me. He's cold— he's always so cold— but it feels good against my burning skin. Like an ice pack to a fever. 

One minute, I was watching the Humdrum torture Baz. He made Baz one of his monsters, one of his minions, and Baz was scratching his own eyes out as he tried to resist. It was horrifying, like watching Professor Moody torture that spider with the Cruciatus Curse in Harry Potter. But worse. Much worse. Because it wasn't just a spider, it was _ Baz _.

It's not morning, like it usually is in these dreams. It's still dark in the room, though I can see through the window that the sky is starting to lighten from black to blue, the way it does around four in the morning. I don't particularly care about the details, though, because this Baz— Dream Baz, not Nightmare Baz— is in my arms. He's safe. 

I sob onto his shoulder as he makes shushing sounds. "Hey, hey," Dream Baz whispers in a raspy voice. He's standing over me kind of awkwardly— half in my bed, half out— and I pull him closer to me, harder, and he makes an _ oomph! _sound, but it gets him into my bed properly. 

"This one was bad, so bad—" I choke out. 

"Shhh—" 

"The Humdrum got you, and he, he—"

"It's alright, it's alright—"

"It was so awful—"

"Shhh. You're safe, you're safe now." Baz starts to stroke my hair affectionately, and I let out a sigh. I feel so tired, I could pass out if I weren't already asleep. 

"_You're _ safe," I whisper back, relieved. My heart starts to finally slow down. I see blackness cloud my vision and my focus slip from my grasp, but I still feel Baz's cool hand at the back of my neck and firm pressure at my waist. 

I finally fall into a deep rest with Baz in my arms. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you all liked chapter two! 
> 
> (also, fair warning: i do not know if i'm gunna be able to wrap this up in just one more chapter so this'll probably end up being longer)


	3. your love's too good to be true

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! i've decided to make this four chapters in total instead of three, so this'll be the penultimate instead of the final one now. 
> 
> big thanks to my lovely beta [@thedaggerrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedfetish/pseuds/thedaggerrose) who helped me so much when i was struggling with this chapter! 
> 
> without further ado: here's chapter three!

**Simon**

I wake up late morning to the sun shining through the window and beating its warmth onto my face. I wipe the sleep from my eyes as last night's dreams come back to me in flashes. 

The Humdrum. Nightmare Baz. Dream Baz. 

There's an indent in the mattress beside me—like Baz really did sleep with me. I must have moved a lot in my sleep. (And I must be just fantasizing the cedar and bergamot scent on my pillow.)

I look to Baz's side of the room, and see he didn't make his bed before he left for football practice this morning. I frown at the rumpled sheets—I don't think this has ever happened before. He always casts **Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness **on his bed in the mornings; it's a spell I've never been able to master, because I think you have to really value tidiness to get it to work. (Baz is an utter clean freak and had the spell mastered the first morning of first year.) 

I wonder if he was too tired to make his bed because he used his magic on me last night.

He must have spelled me, right? Why else would I have had that dream about him?

It seemed realer than the others; it was sharper. Like Baz had really crawled into my bed and held me while I cried. 

_ Should I confront him about it? _ I think to myself as I stare as Baz's messy bed. (His pillows are nearly falling off, for Merlin's sake!) I don't want him to get mad and stop coming to the room again, though. It _ is _his room too, after all; he shouldn't be scared to sleep here. If that's what he is. Baz is too hard to read; his facial expressions essentially only consist of self-righteous contempt, cruel amusement, and blank boredom. Plus, the face I personally call his "plotting my downfall" look. (That one always makes me shiver.) 

But he's got to have other emotions, yeah? He's not a cardboard cutout of a supervillain, no matter how much he seems like it sometimes. 

Maybe I'm just confusing Dream Baz and Real Baz, though. Seeing what I want to see. (Not that I want to see Baz like that—there's no way I _ want _ to see him in my bed. No. I just want to not have any more nightmares.)

My stomach growls, breaking me out of my attempts to rationalize what's been happening with me and Baz. I look over at the clock and realize they're only serving breakfast for thirty more minutes. I throw my uniform on and brush my teeth in less than five, and take the steps two at a time in my rush to the dining hall.

When I get there, Agatha's nowhere to be found, but Penny's still sitting there waiting for me.

"Simon!" She exclaims, "You took so long to come down I started to fear you'd met a Basilisk in the courtyard or something."

She tries to sound light-hearted and joking, but there's an edge to her voice. There hasn't been a Humdrum attack this year yet, but I know she's been extra worried about me since last June. 

"Just overslept," I say casually as she hands me the plate of scones she's saved for me. I send her a grateful smile before shoving an entire pastry in my mouth. She wrinkles her nose in disgust. I grin wider, with my mouth open, and she goes "ugh!" though she seems faintly amused. 

"So, you seem better today," she says, hope creeping into her voice. I grunt in agreement, my mouth full of sour cherry scone. "You seem less tired."

"Slept alright, mostly," I say, and Penny visibly brightens. 

"Do you think it was the run we went on yesterday? Or did you use the meditation technique I taught you?" she asks. 

Penny's been trying to brainstorm ways to improve my sleep. I don't want to tell her that I don't think it was any of her suggestions. 

I don't want to admit that it was probably Baz Pitch, not even to myself. This seemed like an evil plan to me at first, but now it's just… weird. If this is a plot, it's not the worst one he could have thought up. Trying to murder me with a chimera was much more evil, for instance. This just gives me a stomach ache; I always wake up with an uneasy, fluttering feeling in my gut. 

I want to ask Penny about this without telling her about Baz's involvement (both in and out of my dreams); so I say, as casually as I can manage, "Hey Pen, are there any spells or curses for changing dreams?" 

Penny gets her Know-It-All Face on (the one she always gets whenever the subject turns to magic academia) and pushes her glasses a little up her nose. "Well, sure. But they're all awfully tricky."

"What d'you mean?"

"Dream magick is more about emotion than power, so it's pretty unpredictable. You know how magic is more like an art than a science?" I nod along, though I did not know that. "Those spells are especially up to artistic interpretation."

"So, say someone wanted to… put themselves in your dream. Inception style." Penny furrows her brow at my reference. "You know, Inception. The movie with Leonardo DiCaprio."

Penny's confusion switches to annoyance. "The one with the coin?" She wrinkles her nose. "That movie's bollocks, Simon. It makes no sense." 

"I know, I know. I'm just talking about like, doing the general concept. But with magic."

"I suppose singing **I Know You! I Walked With You Once Upon A Dream **would work. You have to be really careful with it, because if you mess it up it'll put you in a wakeless sleep, but it lets you dream with your lover."

My face heats up at her use of the word "lover", and the thought of Baz's lips against my hairline pops into my head unbidden. "No, no, not like that," I insist (though it is _ a little _like that). "A spell that would make you dream something that is, like, totally impossible."

"**Cloud-cuckoo-land **will put you in a utopian world. Everything exactly how you want the world to be when you dream, but the odds are it'll make you go mad during the daytime."

Not that one either, then. It's not like being in bed with Baz is my idea of a perfect world. (Though I may be going mad.) 

I'm trying not to think, but Penny breaks the silence.

"What's this about, Simon? Is it your sessions with the Mage?" Penny asks, openly disapproving.

I don't want to talk about that, so I say, "I'm going down to the pitch," to end the conversation. I wolf my fifth scone down in record speed before Penny can object.

"I thought we agreed to cut down the stalking Baz while he plays football down to just his actual games back in sixth year, Simon," Penny complains with a frown.

"That wasn't stalking, that was observing. And this isn't about Baz," I lie. "Just feel like watching some footie is all."

Penny clearly doesn't believe me, but she fixes my tie for me before I leave the dining hall, so at least she's not cross with me. 

Practice is in full swing when I make it to the pitch. I sit in the bleachers and wait for Baz to notice me. 

It doesn't take long. (It never does.) But, usually, he sends me a glare, scores a goal, and then smirks triumphantly at me as to say '_ look how graceful and talented I am.' _

That's not what happens today. Today, he trips over the ball and falls flat on his face.

I let out an involuntary laugh at his clumsiness. I've never seen Baz fall down before; even when I broke his nose back in third year, he barely lost his balance for a moment. 

Coach Mac and all his teammates look shocked too. Baz pushes himself up in a hurry, readjusting the headband he always wears to play. (His hair is awfully long for a bloke, coming all the way to the tops of his broad shoulders when he's got it loose.) He's trying to look nonchalant, but if I didn't know any better, I'd say he's almost _ blushing. _

He avoids my gaze after that. I'm trying not to think about what that's supposed to mean, but I can't help but wonder if he tripped up because, with all the weirdness going on between us, my presence makes him nervous. 

I could ask him after practice, but I'm not sure how I'd phrase it. _ Is it weird to look at me after you've cast your invasive yet strangely helpful dream spell on me? _

Couch Mac blows his whistle to signal the end of practice, and the team breaks up. Baz sends me an indecipherable look, much too brief to interpret, before ducking into the locker room. 

I decide to wait out on the bleachers for him. Though, that plan is abruptly ruined when a raven comes up behind me and pecks at my shoulder.

"FUCK!" I scream so loudly I startle the bird. It jumps back and I feel bad, so I murmur out a soft apology and hold out my hand gingerly to let it know it can approach me again. The raven hops back over to me, glaring a bit, and drops a note in my hand. 

"_ Simon, meet me in my chambers at once." _It's not signed, but there's only one person it could be from. 

With a sigh, I make my way towards the professors' tower to meet the Mage. 

* * *

I feel as though my head's been put through a blender when I finally make it back to the room. My magic is bubbling right under the surface of my fingertips; I'm so electric I feel as though I'd give someone a static shock if they touched me. 

I know that the Mage is just trying to protect me from the Humdrum, but Merlin, I wish that could happen somehow without draining me of my energy and setting my magic on fire.

I'm surprised to see Baz in the room when I get there. He may have finally started sleeping in our bedroom again, but he's only been coming back right before curfew (even after curfew, sometimes, though I haven't ratted on him for it for some reason). He's got a book in his lap, and before my brain can stop me, my mouth asks, "What d'you got there?"

Baz looks up at me, seeming a bit taken aback that I'm asking him a question without any trace of hostility. He answers, a bit cautiously, "Pride and Prejudice." 

"Oh. Cool," I say, because I can't think of anything better to say. There's a brief pause, but I break it with the next thing that pops in my head. "True love."

"Pardon me?" Baz chokes out, eyebrow raised.

"Uh..." I scratch the back of my neck. "Penny says there's a lot of marriage rites from that book, because the characters are an example of true love. She likes those kind of family spells, and she talks about that book sometimes." 

"Oh. Well, yes, Bunce is right," he says stiffly, and looks back at his book. 

The tension growing between us is uncomfortable. I really should just let it drop. But I want to keep him talking. I want to figure him out. (You'd think with all the following him around I've done, I'd know more about him. But maybe Baz Pitch is unknowable.) (That's not going to stop me from trying.) 

"How was football practice?"

"Shouldn't you know? You were there," Baz snaps, and then his grey skin flushes a little. (Okay, now I'm _ sure _he's blushing. As much as a vampire can, anyways. What a sight.) He changes the subject, like he knows how tempted I am to bring up the fact that he tripped. "How was your session with the Mage?"

"Er- how did you know that's what I was doing?"

"Context clues." I cock at my head at him, because I want him to elaborate. "You look like shit."

I'd usually be offended by this, but I reckon he's right, so I let out a reluctant laugh. His eyebrows raise marginally and his lips part in surprise at the sound. It's fun to shock Baz Pitch; I wasn't sure it could be done. So, I add for good measure, "Thanks, mate," and smile when it causes both his eyebrows to crawl up further on his forehead. 

"What is the Mage d—" he starts, and then stops. "What are the two of you working on?"

I shouldn't tell him. I really shouldn't. Baz is the enemy—he's a Pitch, he's a vampire, he's been an awful git to me from the day we met. 

But he's also getting rid of my nightmares. He probably isn't meaning to, but he is. 

"He's protecting me against the Humdrum," I say. 

"How?" 

"Well…" I say, "You know how he took me and Pen last year?" I don't add _ while you we're chatting up Agatha, _because that will just start a fight. It's not like I'm worried about him stealing Agatha away—she's not my girlfriend and she's not interested in Baz. (Part of me wants to tell him that so he doesn't try to go after her, but I don't want to out Aggie. Plus, it's like he's caught on that she's not interested—he hasn't flirted with her all year.) 

"Yes," he responds flatly. 

"The Mage is casting spells on me to help prevent that from happening again. And teaching me spells to protect myself. To make me stronger." 

Baz raises an eyebrow at me, but says nothing.

"What?" I ask. But he doesn't say anything, just lets his eyebrow drop. But his face isn't any less skeptical. "C'mon. Just say it," I demand. Baz and I aren't supposed to be careful with one another, and I'm sick of walking on eggshells. 

"How does he know spells for that?"

I furrow my brow. "He's the Mage." 

"I'm aware of that, thanks," Baz remarks, rolling his eyes. "But the Humdrum is a magical anomaly. No one knows how he works. Or if it's even a he. Or _ anything_, other than he sucks magic out of the atmosphere. How could the Mage possibly know which spells would prevent something that's never happened before?"

I pause to consider this. I didn't question how the Mage would know what protection spells would work against the Humdrum. I mean… he's the Mage. He's always known what to do. Always known what's best for me.

"I reckon he's inventing them. Penny's never heard of any of them, and she says she can't find any books on them in the library." 

Baz scoffs, and I know what he's thinking without having to ask. When he gave a speech on academic reform in Political Science last year, he was ranting about how when his mother was headmaster, there were no restricted books. He even went as far as to compare the Mage taking dangerous books off the shelf to the Nazi's book burnings. (He's got balls, I'll give him that.)

"What are some of the spells?" 

I shrug. "There's plenty of 'em." More than I can count. The Mage is really committed to this plan of action.

"Like what?" Baz has never asked me so many questions before. Or spoken to me like this—with a tinge of something close to _ worry _—before. Maybe he's afraid that whatever the Mage is teaching me will make me too powerful. Like an indestructible nuclear bomb. Except, he sees me every day—he must know that's not the case. More than anything, it's running me ragged, making me more unpredictable than ever. Even after sitting here for ten minutes, I still feel like I've got dangerous lightning in my palms. 

I'm staring at my hands as I answer him, almost expecting them to light on fire (like Baz's hands do). "Today he was teaching me to cast '**The sixfold company in two divides; Another way my sapient Guide conducts me; Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; And to a place I come where nothing shines.'**" 

I know the spell by heart because I had to say it so many bloody times. The Mage put his hand on my shoulder, to give me strength, he said, and had me do it over and over, until the phrase was a mantra in my head. I didn't understand what it meant; but the Mage told me to just picture myself in armor, as untouchable. I did my best, though I'm not sure if it worked. The room smelt like my magic by the end, but that could have been a side effect of my exhaustion. 

Baz frowns, considering. "That's not made up." 

"No?"

"No," he says slowly. "That's from Dante's _ Inferno _." 

I try to place the title, but I can't. I stare at him blankly. 

"The first part of Dante's epic poem _ The Divine Comedy _?" I continue to stare blankly at him, and he huffs. "Crowley, Snow. It's a classic." 

"How was I supposed to know?" I ask with a defense edge to my voice. "We didn't study it in Magickal Literature." (At least, I don't remember reading it.) 

"Well, it's fallen a bit out of fashion, so it's not taught as much. But there's plenty of lines that are old, useful spells in there." He looks thoughtful. "Did it... hurt?" he asks in a stilted voice. 

"No," I lie, and he raises an eyebrow. "Well… yes. Maybe a little. Like flexing a muscle for far, far too long, I suppose. But that's how you get stronger, yeah? Working out your muscles? Magic is the same way." It comes out as more of a question than I intended, like I really want him to give me an answer; to tell me that this is how I'm supposed to feel after doing so much difficult magic. (I don't mention that it also made me feel small and lonely, like the only person in the world. Like I was on an island that the sun wouldn't touch.)

He lets the silence hang heavy in the room, and it grows more uncomfortable with every moment that passes. I told myself I'd stop being nervous around him, but I can't help it. He's always managed to get my pulse racing, always made me feel breathless. (A side effect of bracing myself for his sneers and taunts and jibes, I suppose.) 

I used to like when it was quiet between us. It meant a break from all of our incessant bickering, from all of our ruthless fighting. I don't know when that changed.

"Well," he finally says, getting off his bed and onto his feet, "I'm off to meet Dev and Niall for dinner." 

"Oh," I say, glancing at the clock. We've still got nearly an hour before supper's supposed to be served, but I don't bother arguing with him.

When I make it to the dining hall exactly at six p.m., Dev and Niall are there, but Baz is nowhere to be found. I expect to feel my suspicions creep up and make me feel paranoid and jumpy. But instead, I'm surprised to find my primary emotion is an unexplainable, heavy disappointment. 

* * *

**Baz**

I want to kill the Mage. 

After Simon told me what spell the Mage had used on him yesterday, I could barely wait to make my way to the library. I didn't expect to find it there; the Mage isn't quite dumb enough to leave breadcrumbs for Snow's sidekick to find. But I wanted to check if there were any references to Dante spells, so I spent an hour casting **Fine Tooth Comb **on fourteenth century literature. (There was, predictably, nothing.) 

I would have gone to the Mage's office next; I know he keeps 'forbidden' books there. Books my mother would let me read, if only I promised to tell her if something frightened me. My mum trusted a five year old with books the Mage now hoards like a selfish tyrant. (Perhaps because he _ is _a selfish tyrant.) But I heard his loud, heavy footsteps pacing behind the wooden door, and even I'm not bold enough to storm the Mage's office with him in there.

So I went out to the hills beyond, by the goatherder's cottage. (There's privacy and good cell reception there. The goatherder ignores the Mage's rules she doesn't like, so she's got the magickal equivalent of a cell tower set up there.) I called Fiona on my cell phone, and she didn't pick up my first call. (Or my second. Or my third.)

On the fourth try, she snarled out a, "What do you _ want_, boyo? I was sleeping." 

"It's eight p.m."

"Exactly, I needed a power nap before I hit the pubs, and you've woken me an hour early."

I rolled my eyes. Fiona parties like she's seventeen instead of thirty-seven. (Sometimes I think Mordelia's got her beat in the maturity department, though I'd never say that to either of them.) "I need your help." 

"Is this about Simon Snow?" she complained. "Lad, you talk about that wanker way too much. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you had a crush." 

"It's about the Mage," I deflected, and then I had her full attention. (If I 'plotted' against the Mage as much as my aunt, Snow would be right about me.)

It took her twenty-four hours to get back to me (she said that she 'refused to cancel her plans to do my research'), but now she's confirmed my suspicions. 

I'm locked in the bathroom, looking at the pictures of the pages from one of Watford's old textbooks Fiona just sent me. Reading the text, I feel white hot rage coil in my gut and spread quickly to my fingertips and toes. 

** _"The sixfold company in two divides; Another way my sapient Guide conducts me; Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; And to a place I come where nothing shines.": _ ** _ This rare and advanced spell, nicknamed the Purgatory spell, originates from the section in Dante's Inferno in which Dante and his Guide, Virgil, leave Purgatory, the first circle of hell. In 1817, Laura Sutton created the spell to prevent her late husband from visiting her during the Visitings. She had her closest companion, Carmilla, help her "guide" the spell, and through nightly castings, was able to ward off Laura's husband for the duration of the Visiting. To cast this spell, the "guide" must act as a shield by envisioning the person the castor wishes to block in order to protect the castor from any Visitors. _

I'm going to kill the Mage.

I knew the Mage was preventing Simon from getting a Visiting from his mother; my mother told me so. But getting the confirmation still makes me want to forgo mage dueling and just punch that spineless coward in the face. 

I cast a silencing charm on the door, just in case Snow comes back from his meeting with the Mage early, and hit the dial button on Fiona's contact. She doesn't make me wait four phone calls this time. 

"What's going on, Basil? What's the Mage doing messing with Visitings?"

"Is there a counterspell?" 

"Has he prevented Tasha from—"

"_ Fiona _. Counterspell. Please." I need it soon, now, before the Mage changes his tactics and puts a different spell on Simon. 

Fiona pauses. She must have heard the desperation in my voice, the seriousness, because she just says, "Give me a minute."

It takes her longer than a minute. After a half hour, she sends me more pages of counterspells to _ Divine Comedy _ spells. 

My breath catches in my throat when I find one that'll work. A general, powerful, counterspell to any Dante-inspired enchantments. 

One of the last lines of Dante's _Divine Comedy_. **_L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle._** Italian for _The love that moves the sun and the other stars. _A spell that requires you to be totally, irreversibly, stupidly in love with the person you cast it on. 

I let out a humorless laugh. _ Of course _ this is going to take another spell that reveals just how desperately enamoured with Simon Snow I am. Just my stupid luck. 

I hear Snow come through the door to our room and my laugh dies in my throat, even though I know he can't hear me with my silencing spell. I hear his heavy, clambering footsteps and his steady heartbeat and I think to myself, _ well, I suppose I'll just be grateful Snow doesn't know Italian. _

**Simon**

I'm facedown on my bed when Baz comes out of the loo. 

"Another rough day as the Greatest Mage, Snow?" he asks. He's almost got a teasing lilt to his voice, but it falls flat, like he's not used to being humorous. (He's probably not; I've never heard him take the piss, unless mercilessly insulting me until I go off counts as anyone's version of a joke.) 

"Shut up, Baz," I retort without lifting my head from my pillow. My muscles are protesting in sore agony from my session with the Mage, and I'm determined not to move an inch.

Until I realize that he's taken my suggestion to shut up seriously; that's when I look up at him. 

He's looking at me with an expression that's almost vulnerable: his head is tilted curiously and he's missing the ever-present tension he usually has in his shoulders and jaw (especially when he sees me). His grey eyes widen a little when he realizes I've caught him staring, but he holds his gaze steady, not one to ever back down from a fight.

I recognize his expression from my dream last night (though, then, he was wearing much less clothing). 

I avert my eyes at the memory, and duck into the bathroom with a mumbled explanation of "shower." (I wasn't going to shower, but a pre-emptive cold one wouldn't hurt.) 

It's time for me to get to the bottom of this once and for all. I need to know what spell Baz is casting on me, even at the risk of him stopping. I need to know what Baz is doing to me, and why, or I'm going to go mad. 

I let the cool shower water run down my back, and I plot against Baz. 

* * *

I never thought Penny's meditation techniques would actually come in handy; I've got to remember to thank her later. 

I know when I first got into bed—earlier than usual in my eagerness to finally catch Baz in the act—my heart was hammering like a hummingbird. But in the time since I've started meditating, I've cleared my mind, listening to and thinking only of my breath. _ In, out. In, out. In, out. _

I don't know how much time has passed; I feel weightless, spaceless, like I'm outside of my own body. I know it's been a while since I crawled into bed, and that my breaths have been even for long enough for Baz to think I'm asleep, surely. 

He's not asleep, though. (I know because he snores; it's quiet, almost silent, but it's distinct to me after all these years sleeping in the same bedroom. He's like my very own white noise machine.) 

It's time for phase two. 

I clutch at my bedsheets and let panic fill my lungs, let it crawl up my throat. It's not difficult; I feel like I'm on the edge of terror most days, always anticipating another Humdrum attack. The fear is jarring after such a long stretch of peace, like taking a pretty drive along the coastline and then suddenly jerking the wheel at ninety degrees to plunge over the edge. I hear my heartbeat thudding in my ears at the rush of anxiety. I start to thrash, pretending like I'm fighting one of my nightmares. 

(Baz once complained that I "make such a production" out of my nightmares. I'm giving him exactly what he expects.) 

I don't hear him move yet, so I choke out "No, stop!" 

I'm not a good actor, but it works. In one stride, he's standing over me. I know he's there; his breath is uneven and loud in the silent room, and I can sense it right above me. 

"Please," I add. _ Please show me what spell you've been using. Please show me what your big plot is. _

But also, beneath that, a small voice I want to ignore says, _ please let me go be with a version of you that wants me. _

"**L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle** _ ," _ he casts, but the blood is still roaring in my ears, and I don't quite catch it. _ Dammit, _ I think in a panic. I expected the spell to be in English. _ What the hell did he just say? _

I wait for the dreams to overtake me, wait to drown in the pleasantness of Dream Baz. But that doesn't happen; I go stiff, and I feel the magic wash over me, warm and sudden. But it doesn't make me sleepy; if anything, I feel more awake, like I'm preparing for a battle.

Then, I feel a cool hand brush a lock of my hair off my face. _ Baz's hand _, I realize a moment later than I should have, shocked that the Real Baz would voluntarily touch me.

But I don't have time to think much on that, because Baz is casting another spell before I can begin to make sense of the tender gesture. 

He says it so softly, so gently, that I wouldn't know it was magic, except the air suddenly smells more distinctly of gunpowder. "**Sweet Dreams**," his clear, pretty voice says, and this time, I float into dreams of Baz instantly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, friends! please let me know your thoughts/ leave kudos if you enjoyed this!
> 
> & come find me on [Tumblr](https://annabellelux.tumblr.com)


	4. i don't want to wake up from you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me a hot sec, but please accept the fact that it's the longest one by several thousand words as consolation. And it's the last chapter!! Thank you to everyone who has read/ subscribed/ left comments & kudos on this fic! It kept me writing when I was less than confident about my progress.
> 
> special thanks to my lovely beta [@thedaggerrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedfetish/pseuds/thedaggerrose) who helped me tremendously when I really struggled with the ending. (Endings are hard!)
> 
> anyways, hope you enjoy!

**Simon**

I'm buried underneath the covers, but I'm not burning up for once. At least, not temperature wise. (My heart's another story.)

In my dream, Baz's cool hands roam down the length of my body under the safety of my bedsheets. He plays me like he plays the violin, his touch delicate and precise; like he knows the curves of my body inside and out, like he knows exactly how to make me sing. It's blissful enough to make me forget everything but his long fingers and soft lips and enchanting eyes. 

That is, until I hear her voice. 

"Simon." The whisper is soft, and I don't hear it over my contented sighs at first. Not until it gets a little stronger, a little louder. "My rosebud boy._ Simon." _

I see a flash of blonde hair in the corner; for a moment, I think maybe it's Agatha. _ (That _ would be uncomfortable: a third wheel situation I'd never expected—one where _ Agatha _is the one left out.) But I see the woman is a little too tall and a little too old to be Agatha. Though I don't get a clear look at her features before I wake. 

I'm alone when I open my eyes. No Baz, no Agatha, no mystery woman. 

The blonde woman is dismissed from my thoughts quickly, though; my mind brings me back to the events of last night instead. To finally figuring out what Baz has been doing to me. 

**Sweet Dreams. **That's what Baz has been casting. 

I don't know what I thought the spell would be. But… not that. I've never heard of it, but it seems pretty self explanatory to me. 

Baz has been trying to make my dreams _ sweet _. On purpose.

Although… I don't know why my idea of a sweet dream would be kissing and cuddling with him. Is it a side effect of the spell? The person casting it has to be in the dream? The general idea of kissing is sweet, even when it's with him. (I never would have thought that possible, but I can’t deny that a part of me _ likes _the dreams.) Maybe, since Baz was the one who cast it, the spell just filled in the blanks with his lips and his hands and his—

Aleister Crowley. I don't have the mental energy to consider the hows and whys of this just yet, so I force myself up out of bed and concentrate only on the tasks at hand. 

_ Brush my teeth. Put on trousers. Tie my tie. Don't think about what Dream Baz tastes like. Don't think about Real Baz brushing a stray curl off my forehead. Don't think about any version of Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch. Don't think. _

I take the not thinking thing too far, and that's why I end up running all the way across campus to the hills beyond, twenty minutes late to meet Ebb for our weekly Sunday breakfast. We've been doing it since the beginning of eighth year. She found me the first week, wandering the grounds early one morning. I couldn't get back to sleep after a particularly vicious nightmare (though, they were all impossibly ferocious before Baz started spelling me) (don't _ think _about it, Simon). Anyways, I stumbled into her with my rid-rimmed eyes and hunched shoulder, and she not-so-subtly insisted I spend a little more time with her. It's been good for me; Ebb's a good listener. I love Penny to death, but she's such a natural problem solver that she doesn't realize that sometimes I just need to be heard (not to be given solutions or told lighten up).

Ebb flashes me her wide, crooked smile when I come jogging up to her. "Whatcha rushing for, Simon?" 

"Sorry I took so long, Ebb," I huff. "Late morning." 

"No worries. The nannies aren't on a schedule," she replies with an amused lilt to her voice. 

We feed the goats their breakfast first thing; Ebb insists they have to get our fill before us. Part of me—my stomach, namely—wants to object, but _ I _was the one who was late, so I hold out my hand to Ebb's nannies without complaint. 

We're still enjoying a peaceful silence when we make her way into her cottage, a small structure snuggled between the hills. It looks the way you'd anticipate a witch's cottage to look—covered in brick and moss with a garden snaked around the front. It's very Ebb. 

She puts the kettle on, and then gets to making fried eggs. She's already got the cooled scones on an oven rack, and she casts a **Some Like It Hot! **on the scones and hands me a plate of them to eat while she finishes up at the stove.

"So," she says as she hands me a cuppa, "what's got your knickers in a twist?" 

"What?"

"You're leaking magic, boyo," she says with a sympathetic smile. "Is it the Mage?" She asks the question without any judgmental implications in her voice. (I know Ebb doesn't approve of the Mage's tactics either, but she's not nearly as brazen as Penny about it.)

"No." I recognize this response is more of a reflex than an answer at this point. Though, the Mage isn't the main question on my mind right now. It's…

"Have you ever heard the spell **Sweet Dreams?"**

Ebb's eyes light up with recognition. "Yeah, of course. Powerful spell, that one." 

My heartbeat's loud in my ears. I have to ask the question, though I'm not much sure I'll like the answer. "How does it work?"

"It's an old, powerful protective spell. It takes you to your favourite place with your favourite person in your dreams." 

Just like that, the blood rushing in my ears quiets as my heart skips several beats. "What? No. That's impossible." 

She cocks her head and furrows her eyebrows. "No," she says slowly. "It's love magic. Wickedly sentimental stuff."

"How would you know?" I snap, and Ebb looks taken aback at my sharpness. I don't know how to say it's not aimed at _ her. _It's not really aimed at anyone. Or maybe it's aimed at myself. 

"My brother and I used to cast it on one another," she responds quietly, "to take away each others nightmares." 

If I felt bad being sharp with her before…

The tears gather in her eyes, like they always do when someone brings up Nicky. Ebb doesn't like talking about her brother; I'm not sure exactly how he died, but she'll cry any time he comes up.

"I'm sorry Ebb," I say, and I really am. I stand to put my arm around her, and she sniffles unselfconsciously against my chest. (I don't particularly like hugging—I'm rubbish at it—but I feel like I have to do _ something _after making Ebb cry.) 

She brushes it off after a couple of awkward moments. "Anyways," she pivots, though there's a lingering heaviness in her voice. "Don't think you're getting off easy by changing the subject. Tell me what's wrong."

I don't tell her that I hadn't changed the subject—not really. "No… It's just… you know, Baz." 

"The Pitch boy? I thought the two of you were getting along better this year." 

I snort. "What would make you say that?"

"I haven't pulled the two of you apart in ages! The two of you used to walk around sporting black eyes and busted lips like it was your own personal fashion statements." She says this almost nostalgically, like my bloody brawls with Baz were amusing to her. 

_ "Not actively beating the shite out of each other _ and _ getting along _ aren't quite the same thing," I counter. 

"Well, I'm still holding out hope for you two. The Crucible's never been wrong before. Don't see why it'd start with the pair of you." 

The thought makes me uncomfortable, so I take some eggs onto my fork and shovel them into my mouth to avoid having to respond. Ebb takes my cue to end the conversation and starts eating herself, but she can't quite hide the curious glint in her eye. 

_ My plan to not think about Baz Pitch didn't last an hour, _ I think grumpily as Ebb and I spend the rest of our breakfast in thoughtful silence. 

* * *

I decide I have to tell Penny everything. (I probably should've done so _ ages _ ago; we do have a no secrets pact, after all.) 

I drag her out of the library to the empty field of grass behind Mummers House, and she listens to my explanation attentively, dutily keeping her promise not to interrupt until the end. I can tell she has plenty she wants to say, though; her eyebrows keep raising higher and higher up her forehead. After I finally finish with what Ebb told me about **Sweet Dreams**, she lets a gap of quiet stretch on for another ten seconds. 

Finally, she breaks the silence with, "Damn it."

"What?" I ask, worried she's going to tell me that Ebb was wrong, that **Sweet Dreams** is actually a sinister spell, and that he's actually cursed me with dragon pox or some other horrible illness. 

"Trixie bet me this would happen. I owe her fifty pounds now." 

"What's 'this'?"  
  


"You and Baz, being into each other. I told her she'd just been reading too much Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy fanfiction when she predicted it last year, but you really are arse over tit for him, huh?" 

“Penny, this is serious.”

“Yeah,” she agrees earnestly, “you are seriously into Baz.”

“I’m not,” I insist and she raises both her eyebrows at me. 

"Then why are you having sex dreams about him?" 

All the blood in my body rushes to my ears and cheeks as I stammer, "They're not—I'm not—I don't—stop_ laughing!" _

She covers her mouth with her palm, but her giggles still spill out the sides of her hand. 

"Listen—_ Listen— _ it's not just **Sweet Dreams**." I reckon the panic in my voice is what makes her laughs finally subside. "He's casting other spells on me in other languages! The one last night was… I think… French?"

"Oh no!" she says sarcastically. "Was it **Je t'aime**?"

"Why are you taking the piss out of me right now? Baz could be planning to _ kill _me for all we know!" I yell so loudly I scare the birds over our heads out of their tree. Penny gapes at me, her expression disbelieving. 

"Simon," she says, and all the humor in her voice is gone. She's looking at me with a mixture of confusion and concern. "Do you really still think he's going to do that? Now that you know that he's capable of casting **Sweet Dreams **on you?" 

I'm about to ask her what she means by that—of course Baz can manage the spell, he can do anything—when I catch sight of someone in a dark green peacoat heading towards the Wavering Woods. I'd recognize the jacket anywhere; it's Baz's favourite. (I hate it. It makes him look like a bloody Burberry model.) 

I don't want to think about all the things the sight of him does to my stomach. I feel like there's a civil war raging behind my belly button, like there's mutinous warriors fighting to break free from my body just under my rib cage. I taste the burn of my magic on my tongue, and before I can think better of it, I run after him. 

The sound of the wind whips in my ears as I catch up to him. He's already 100 yards into the thick coverage of the trees when he turns around to sneer at me. "I thought you got tired of following me around back in fifth year, Snow. Shouldn't you be busy with your yearly fiasco by now?" Bitter contempt drips from his every word. 

I'm not sure why his snarky commentary shocks me. Running after him like this, following him into the Woods (something I know very well how much he hates)—I expected a fight. But I also remember the softness of his voice in the dark of our bedroom last night, the gentle brush of his fingertips against my cheekbone. It wasn't Dream Baz who cast **Sweet Dreams **on me. It was this one—this snarling, angry, resentful boy in front of me. 

"You're my yearly fiasco." 

He really is. Every path I take always leads me back to him. Somehow, even with all the other mysteries I've got as the Chosen One, I'm also always stuck with the mystery of Baz Pitch. Of what he's doing, what he's thinking, what he's plotting. 

But for the first time, the thing I want to know most of all right now is: what is Baz Pitch _ feeling? _

Crowley. 

**Baz**

Snow looks exactly the way he did the time I cast **Cat Got Your Tongue **on him. Frustrated. Impassioned. Opening and closing his mouth as he tries to choose his words, gaping like a bloody fish. 

"Spit it _ out _ already," I growl when my patience finally wears itself thin. (It takes less than 60 seconds for that. Snow's always one dim-witted comment away from breaking my practised indifferent composure.) 

"Sweet Dreams!" he finally blurts out. 

A quiet pause stretches before us before I manage to choke out, "_ What? _" My low voice is a startling contrast to his previous deafening scream. 

He runs an anxious hand through his curls, and flushes red. "I figured it out. That's the spell you've been using on me." 

"You don't know what you're blathering on about." My voice is even—too even. It's how Vera used to catch me in a lie as a child; I have a habit of compensating for my nerves with a mask of unnatural calmness.

"You bloody well do, Baz." 

"You've hit your head one too many times, Chosen One. Leave me out of whatever twisted fantasy you've concocted—"

"I _ heard _ you! I was only pretending to be asleep and I—I— you said." He growls, a familiar expression of frustration passing over his face; he always looks this way when he can't get his words out properly. "You cast whatever spell on me in French, and then you _ touched me, _ and then you cast **Sweet Dreams** and it made me dream of, of." He cuts himself off as the flush on his cheeks deepens to a dark crimson, and I'm grateful for his rare show of tact. I don't want to hear about how lovely it is for him to canoodle with Wellbelove every time I'm too weak to leave him to his nightmares. 

I want to keep denying it. I want to convince him that he's crazy and that he's just imagined it. I want to say every awful thing I can think of, want to distract him with appalling insults I've never really meant. But there's no use. He knows everything (except that the spell I cast was _ Italian, _the lovely idiot.) 

"Alright," I say. I can just drop out of eighth year, I suppose. Sure, no Pitch has done that since Watford opened in 1563, but there's a first for everything. I could be gone by teatime, move to Egypt, and never have to see Simon Snow's pious, infuriating, gorgeous face ever again. 

"Al...right?"

"Yeah. Alright. You caught me." I throw up my hands in mock defeat. "What are you going to do about it now?" 

I thought the punch would have come by now. We're not in the room; he doesn't have to worry about the Anathema. Surely, by now he's worked out that I fancy him, realized how pathetically and desperately attracted I am to him. If he knows what **Sweet Dreams** is, he knows that it means that he's the person in this world I want to protect the most. 

I expect disgust, fury, hatred. I expect slurs and screams and his sword. 

But his face is just soaked in confusion at my concession. 

"Why would you do that?" 

_ Why would I do what? Fall in love with him? _It's a stupid question that I don't have the answer to. (That's a lie; I have a million answers, starting with his fearless courage and ending with the way he looks shirtless. But admitting as much as I already have about my feelings has already burned my heart from the inside out; there's no need to add fuel to the fire.) I say nothing, but that doesn't stop Snow. (It never has.) 

"Why would you do this to me? What are you plotting?"

That makes me laugh—a loud, full-bodied, unbridled guffaw. He looks taken aback by my reaction (probably because I don't laugh much around him, not unless it's one of perverse glee at his misfortune.) 

"You're unbelievable. Truly, honestly impossible. What _ plot _ could this _ possibly _ be for?" 

"I—you—you're so—and I just—" He's back to stammering. He has the gall to look embarrassed, even when I'm the one whose heart is out on display here.

"I swear, I'll never cast it again, Snow. Is that better? Would that make you _ happy?" _ I snarl, the hurt and humiliation storming in my chest. 

He opens his mouth to answer, but I'm at my limit. I turn on my heel so he can't see my expression, can't see how expertly he manages to break my heart. I snap, "Just leave _ alone _ for once in our lives, Snow," as I retreat further into the woods.

By some miracle, he listens to me. 

I let the tears break from my eyes and spill down my cheeks once I can no longer hear his hammering heartbeat behind me.

* * *

**Simon**

I let Baz walk away without putting up a fight. 

I can't make sense of the thoughts in my head anymore. Everything's upside down—Baz admitted he was casting **Sweet Dreams ** on me. I mean, I _ knew _ it, but Baz never confesses to his plots. He always just tells me I'm crazy, or paranoid, or a waste of magic. 

That's not what he did this time. It's not just the fact that he admitted it; it's the _ way _ he admitted it. The way he just replied _ 'alright' _, like I'd defeated him in some great battle, like he was resigned to his fate. He looked at me like he was expecting me to give him a lashing. 

And I did, didn't I? I didn't know what else to do, so I did what I always do. I accused him of plotting. Even though I knew that was the wrong thing as I said it. 

_ "You're unbelievable. Truly, honestly impossible," _he said, his voice disbelieving. His expression pained.

I felt it creeping on me—the truth of this. The reality I've been wanting to ignore. What I think I've known since that first sweet dream about Baz, since my imagination forced me to taste his lips and feel his skin. Since my subconscious showed me what I really want. 

I can't hold back anymore. When he told me to leave him alone, I realized why I can't. 

I think I may fancy Baz Pitch, just a little. 

Okay, more than a little.

I might be raving bloody mad for Baz Pitch. 

I laugh the way Baz did when I accused him of plotting—a wild, bitter thing. I laugh until it hurts. How did I not _ notice _ ? I've been dreaming of him kissing me for a _ month. _My favourite place is our shared bedroom, and my favourite person…

My favourite person hates me. 

He must, right? All these years of stalking him, of accusing him of plotting, of trying to out him as a vampire. He may have been a right wanker to me from the start, but I'm the one who starts all of our fights now. It's been me for years now. I've been so determined to be near him, so desperate for his eyes on me, so eager for his undivided attention. 

I take my palms to my closed eyelids to try to push the tears back into my head. But they come anyways—angry, miserable,_ stupid _ fucking tears. The sting of unrequited love is sharp; getting dumped by Agatha felt nothing like this. The rejection didn't make its way through my bloodstream like a poison. 

I'm crying in earnest now, the tears hot on my cheeks, my skin itchy with shame. My heart twists painfully at the memory of his expression before he turned away from me, before he left me to stand in the humiliating agony of being so unwanted by him. 

Why did he have to start this in the first place? Why did he have to cast **Sweet Dreams **and force me to face my feelings for him? 

He probably got sick of listening to my nightmares. '_ Stupid, pathetic Snow', _ he probably thought to himself. ' _ Can't even get through the night without my help.' _

_ Well, _ I think bitterly. _ I'm going to have to learn to sleep without him, now. _He'll never spell my rest peaceful again, not after my confrontation today. 

I kneel on the ground with my head in my hands for a long while. I'm not sure how much time has passed; though I know I've gotten hungry. I've surely missed lunch by now, wasted it on fighting with Baz and then bawling my eyes out over it. I open my eyes and stand, hoping that Penny will be able to sneak into the kitchen and grab me some sandwiches. It's worth asking her, at least, as long as she doesn't bring up Baz. 

I start to make my way back to campus, when, on the outskirts of the woods, I see her again. The blonde woman from my bedroom this morning. I had forgotten about her with all the other drama that unfolded today. (Baz has always had a habit of making me forget about everyone and everything else.) But seeing her now, I'm suddenly very curious what she's doing following me. Now that I can see her more clearly, I recognize something about her; the freckles on her cheeks and shape of her nose are vaguely familiar. 

She opens her mouth like she's going to shout something at me, but no sound comes out. The sight is chilling; without thinking about it, I start to run towards her. 

I'm fast, and I cross the length of the woods quickly, but not quickly enough. By the time I make it to where she was standing, she's gone. 

"Simon? Simon!" the Mage bellows at me as he makes his way towards me with his green coat flapping in the wind. "What's the matter?" he demands urgently, surely seeing the wildness in my eyes and tension in my shoulders.

"She was right here," I murmur, continuing to look around for her. I'm not sure who she is, but something about her clear desperation sets me on edge—a bad omen before a thunderstorm. 

"Who?" 

"A… a woman. Tall, with blonde, curly hair. She was right here," I motion to where the Mage is standing now, and his eyes narrow with suspicion. 

"Where did she go? What did she say?" he barks out, looking for her now too. Though, his brand of intensity about the search makes my stomach lurch. 

"She… didn't say anything." I don't tell him that she tried to, that she clearly had something to say. He seems enraged now, and I don't want to make it any worse. 

"Simon," he says sternly. "You're supposed to be protecting yourself from outside forces." 

"I—I am, sir!" 

"Clearly not, if you have ghosts haunting you." 

I don't know how I didn't realize sooner that woman was a ghost; she was fuzzy around the edges and a little grey-ish. And Penny did mention the Veil would be open until the autumn solstice. I look for her again, hoping she'll reappear, imagining that she's standing right here, just out of view, just behind the Veil.

"How do I get her to come back? Could we cast—"

The Mage cuts me off with, "_ Enough _." I go silent, my mouth still agape with my unspoken question. "Come with me."

I'm confused by his sharpness. It's not like ghosts can hurt us; Penny said the ghosts just come if they have something really important to say. If that woman is following me, surely she's trying to tell me something. Why wouldn't the Mage want that?

I want to protest, but I'm not very used to doubting the Mage. Instead I just stammer, "Wha—where to, sir?" 

"We need to cast something to protect you, once and for all." 

* * *

**The Mage**

I'm doing what has to be done. 

I've taken Simon to the top of the White Chapel, where I've stored my potions and ingredients for the spells. 

I promised it wouldn't come to this. That I wouldn’t have to use this particular spell. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Lucy will not stop trying to come for him, but Simon cannot know the circumstances of his birth. No one can. The Old Families would jump at the chance to discredit Simon, to diminish the miracle of his magic. It would topple the delicate balance of the new world I created, the even better world I'm fighting for that is just barely out of my grasp. 

  
"Sir…? What are you…?" he begins to ask before he trails off.

“I’m doing what needs to be done.”

I have no other choice. I need to keep Simon in the dark to protect him.

I finish copying the inscription needed to bind the spell on the bones of a horse’s scalp, and go to mix the blood potion. Blood of a seal, blood of a fox, and…

“Simon, give me your hand.” He looks wary, so I repeat my command with more authority. He lays his palm out to me, and I take my pocketknife to it. He barely flinches at the cut, but at the same moment I’m collecting the blood, the door behind us slams shut with a loud bang.

"**Trespassers Beware**,” I cast onto the entrance to keep Lucy from interfering any further, and then I add Simon’s blood to the mixture on the skull.

“Okay, time to start,” I murmur to myself. I look down to the spell written on a forbidden, early twentieth century book of sorcery from a brilliant, radical Icelandic mage. Its purpose is for exorcising evil spirits; Lucy doesn't quite qualify, but the spell should work nonetheless. It's a harsh spell, and if the recipient doesn't accept it, he can go mad. 

Simon just needs to be strong enough. 

“Sir, I’m not sure—"

"You need to listen to me. This is life or death. You need to let the magic work, okay?" 

Simon doesn't respond for a moment, and I'm worried he's going to waste time arguing with me, so I begin to cast so he won't delay us any further.

**"Thick blood, fighters grow weary. The nation endures centuries of hardship, great destruction, men die, wealth is lost, the destitute are shunned. Perilous ruin the people dread, storm upon storm, plagued by misery, heavy remorse, relentless warfare. An evil stir haunts the world."**

My magic overpowers him, and he lets out a primal scream. 

* * *

**Baz**

I've just drained my third woodpecker when I hear him. 

I'm running before I can stop myself, before I can wipe the blood from my chin, and I collide straight into someone. 

"Oof! Watch it!" she yells; when she realizes who she's just collided with, she frowns. "Basil." 

"Bunce," I respond cooly, and then feel the blood on my chin. I try to be subtle when I wipe it off, but Bunce's eyes narrow. 

"Where's Simon?" she asks suspiciously. 

I answer with a sneer. "Aren't you the one who's his keeper? You already tie his ties for him and warm his food; putting him on his leash wouldn't be a massive stretch."

"Not lately, I'm not. It looks like you've taken that role upon yourself. Did you cast a tracking spell on him too?" 

I feel the blood I just drank rush to my cheeks, and I want to snap back with a snarky response, but then I hear Snow yell again. Both Bunce and I straighten at the noise. 

"Help Snow now, bicker later," I say as I drop my wand from the inside of my sleeve.

"Agreed," she says, and we both make our way over to the source of the screams: the White Chapel. The air smells like Snow's magic before he goes off—a burnt woodsy green scent that makes my head spin a bit. 

I reach for the door handle, and it burns me. "Merlin!"

Penny, ever the over-curious type, goes to reach for the knob herself, and lets out her own stream of curses when the same thing happens to her. 

"If only you had been warned," I remark, my tone dripped in sarcasm. She doesn't respond; she just screws up her face in concentration and looks up to an open window up on the second floor of the White Chapel. 

"We need to get up there. Now." 

She looks at me expectantly and I narrow my eyes at her. "Contrary to Snow's beliefs, I cannot turn into a bat and fly us up." 

"No, but you can wield emotional magic. Remember the _ Romeo and Juliet _ spells we learned last semester." 

I get her meaning in an instant (I _ am _top of the class, after all). I grip my wand tighter as I try to think of literally any other spell right now. A spell that won't be the metaphorical equivalent of ripping out my heart and serving it on a silver platter for Bunce to scrutinize. 

"I already know about **Sweet Dreams.** Simon might not realize exactly what that spell means about how you feel, but I do. We don't have time for your pride." Her expression is fierce; but then Snow screams again, and her face crumbles into desperation. " _ Simon _doesn't have time for your pride," she adds in a cracking whisper.

I swallow the lump in my throat, grab Bunce around the waist, and point my wand up at the open window.

**"On love's light wings." **

* * *

**Simon**

The pain is blinding. 

The second the Mage's spell hits, I feel like my bloodstream has been set on fire. I know I'm screaming, but it doesn't sound like my own voice. It sounds like it's coming from across the room. I wouldn't have realized it was me, except that the exertion hurts my throat. 

"Let the magic protect you, boy!" 

The magic doesn't feel like it's protecting me. It feels like it's tearing me in two; it feels like it's choking the life and magic out of me. The air is smoking thickly around me, making it hard to breathe or think. 

The Mage has a grip on his wand and there's a red string of magic tying us together, connecting us for the spell. The Mage is telling me to _ embrace the magic _ and to _ be strong _ and _ hold on _. But when I feel the magic reach inside my head, it burns too much to focus on any of those things. I'm not sure I can hold on much longer. 

I wish Baz or Penny were here; they could protect me. I want it so badly, I imagine that I can hear them both screaming my name, that I can smell Baz's gunpowder magic, that I can see the two of them floating up through the tall, glass window—

"**Sever all ties!" **Baz has his wand pointed at the connection between the Mage and I, and his voice echoes throughout the room.

_ Oh. _I'm not just imagining it. Penny and Baz are really here. 

_Baz came to save_ _me, _I realize, and the thought makes my heart jump. 

I only have a second to be happy about that before the Mage turns his magic from me to Baz. **"Stand down!" **he casts, and Baz staggers back, his face twisted in pain. 

"Don't hurt him!" I scream, but the Mage doesn't listen to me. **"Lock him up and throw away the key." **Baz’s back straightens and his arms stick to his sides like he's got chains around his middle. He growls in retaliation, but can't reach for his wand to undo the incantation. 

"My mother told me what you've been doing and who you've been keeping from him. You self-righteous, hypocritical _ bastard _ —" Baz curses, and the Mage raises his wand to cast another curse. I scream " _ no!" _ so loudly that I shatter the windows—no, it's not my voice, it's my _ magic. _

"Calm down," the Mage snaps at me, but I can't, _ I can't _. "Don't go off. Don't—"

There's an explosion inside my chest; I direct all my excess magic inward so that it doesn't harm anyone else. The magic twists at my chest and pulls at my guts, but I don't let it outside of my body. I feel it burning through the last of the Mage's incantation, expelling his sandalwood-smelling magic from my veins. 

When I open my eyes, my vision is hazy, but my sight lands on the woman. _ She's back. _Despite the Mage's wishes, I'd hoped she'd come back. She whispers my name (or, at least, it comes out as a whisper; she might have meant it as a scream) and the Mage curses in indignation. 

"Lucy, _ enough _. Leave him be." 

The blonde woman's expression shifts from longing to rage as she turns to the Mage. She doesn't seem to have the energy to talk further, but her murderous expression speaks for her. Though she's a ghost, the Mage takes a step back in the face of her anger, as though she might be able to strike him down with only the force of her contempt. 

After a charged moment, the Mage brushes her off and collects himself, and turns back to me. 

I throw my hands up and back away. _ "Stop. _ Please stop. It hurts." 

"I have to, Simon. I have to protect you."

"She's harmless, I don't want to do the spell again, I—" The Mage takes a step towards me and the panic rises up my throat. _ "Please, don't, please—" _

**"Simon says!"** Penny casts. 

**"Don't hurt me! Stop hurting me!"** The Mage is just two strides away from me when my magic hits him and he falls to the ground. 

"M-mage?" I ask. I kneel down to shake him, but he's still—too still. His face is contorted into his last expression: one of determined rage. "You guys, I can't wake him. Why can't I wake him?" 

Baz and Penny look stricken as I shake the Mage. The only sound in this quiet room is the sound of my pleading, of me asking the Mage to _ wake up, wake up, wake up. _But he won't. 

Dry sobs rip themselves out of my chest as the realization hits me that he won't move ever again. 

A cold hand rests itself on my heaving shoulder, and I startle. I think it must be Baz at first—he's the coldest person I know—but when I look up, it's her. Her eyes are shining with unshed tears but her eye contact is strong, determined. She opens her mouth but, again, nothing comes out. 

_ I wish she could talk to me, _I think to myself and my magic sparks under my skin.

"_ Simon _," she says on an exhale, and marvels at the loudness of her voice. She's got a sweet voice—high and melodious. Like something that would be good for lullabies. "My rosebud boy. My Simon." 

It hits me all at once—why she looked so familiar. I recognize her from my reflection in a mirror. She looks like _ me. _

"Mum?" A mixture of hope and fear spills out into my voice. 

She nods, and her tears spill over onto her cheeks. "It wasn't your fault." Despite the fact that she's crying, her voice is resolute. 

I look to the Mage's lifeless body and a wave of despair washes over me. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to ki—" My voice breaks; I can't make myself finish that sentence. 

"He never should have hurt you. I didn't mean to let him. I'm sorry." She starts to fade, her edges becoming blurry and indistinct. I want to ask her to stay, want to beg her to tell me about herself. But ghosts don't last long—they dissolve once they come back to say what they need to. She's _said_ her piece—now she's got to _find _her peace. 

She pets my hair, and the gesture is so foreign to me, but so distinctly motherly, that it shatters my heart. "My rosebud boy," she repeats, and her voice is made of love, "I never would have left you."

Then she's gone. 

The floodgates open inside my chest. 

This time the arms that come around me are Baz's, not my mother's. I'm crying so hard that I can only barely hear his soft words over the horrible sounds spilling out of my mouth. His promises of '_ Simon, Simon, it's alright' _are nearly drowned by the weight of my grief. 

* * *

**Baz**

Simon Snow is curled up on a ball on his bed, and I'm not quite sure what to do. 

There was a time where I'd have made it worse—taunted him with sneers and insults and said he was _ 'the worst Chosen One to ever be chosen.' _I wouldn't have meant a word of it, but I would have still done it. 

I can't bring myself to do that now. I want to wrap him in my arms and soothe his aching heart. I want it so badly I'm clenching my fists to keep from reaching out to him and clenching my teeth to keep from whispering sweet nothings in his ear. But I'm sure he'd prefer the fighting to something like that. 

The Coven showed up pretty quickly after what happened. Interrogated us all for hours—though, Penelope and I had to do most of the talking. Snow has been mute ever since his mother left. 

Bunce's mother came to get her, and she left with her kicking and screaming. She loves Simon Snow something fierce—something that the two of us have in common, though she's worlds better at showing it. I wouldn't be surprised if Bunce slipped from her mother's protective grasp by tea time tomorrow to collect Snow. 

But for now, he's alone. Or, alone with me. I think he'd rather just be alone. So I ask him, "would you like me to go?" 

He peers up at me through red-rimmed lashes. He scrutinizes me for a moment, and I worry he's going to start screaming or crying again. But he just shakes his head slowly. 

I lean back to put my back against the wall by my bed, prepared to stay here as long as he wants me. I let the silence stretch out into the night. It's not quite uncomfortable, but it's unhappy. 

When Snow finally speaks, his voice is cracking with disuse. "Why did you come for me?" 

"I heard you screaming." The memory of that fear shoots through me brand new, and I shudder. 

"So?" he asks, sitting up from the fetal position.

"So," I say slowly, "I came to help." 

"Why?" 

I want to snap at him to stop asking stupid fucking questions; my knee jerk reaction when Simon makes me feel deeply for him is to be unforgiveably cruel. I wield my sharp tongue the way Snow wields his sword. As a method of protection. 

"You'd do it for me," I respond, looking down at my hands. It's not an answer to his question, but it's the truth all the same. 

Another long stretch of silence, and then: "Do you think I'm pathetic?" 

The question shocks me, and I look up to see he's being genuine; there's no faking the vulnerability of his expression. Plus, he's Simon Snow—he doesn't do duplicity. His emotions are always written all over his face. 

"No," I reply to his question. I want to break eye contact, but I can't; it's like he's thralled me. "I think you're the bravest bastard I know." 

He smiles at me—it's watery, but still so beautiful. And then his expression drops. "I really am a bastard, aren't I? Both my parents are dead now." 

My heart twists in my chest. I wasn't sure if he had realized the Mage was his father yet; selfishly, I'm glad I'm not the one who has to spell it out for him. I can't help myself when I get up and sit beside him on his bed. 

"That wasn't your fault," I say earnestly. 

"I'm the one who said the words." 

"And Bunce is the one who cast the spell." I don't mind throwing Bunce under the bus. Especially because during the testimony to the Coven, she made a point of insisting that it wasn't Simon's doing, what happened to the Mage. I could tell she was trying to assuage his guilt, and I try the same thing now. "And the Mage is the one who couldn't stop himself from hurting you." 

What kind of piece of shit father do you have to be to not be able to restrain from hurting your own son, so much so that it kills you? I want to rage and curse at the Mage's memory, may he rest in misery. But I don't want to make it worse for Simon, so I keep my mouth shut, and hope my words reach him. Hope that he can accept this was the Mage's fault, not his. 

He's looking at me like I'm a puzzle he can't work out. He cocks his head and looks at me like he's trying to read my mind. It makes my skin prickle with the fear of being known—truly known—by Simon Snow. I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff, and I'm about to jump off; I've got adrenaline and terror coursing through me in equal measure. 

"Why did you cast **Sweet Dreams **on me?" he asks again. 

His eyes are so blue, so earnest, that they work as well as a truth spell. The words are wrenched out of me unbidden: "Because I wanted to stop your nightmares. Because I wanted to protect you. Because I care about you."

I don't know what I expected his response to be. But it certainly wasn't this: Simon Snow pressing his lips to mine.

This isn’t the first kiss I'd always imagined—a final defiant act on a battlefield, my final wish with my last breath. This one is heartbreakingly sweet and surprisingly slow. This is the kind of kiss that promises a second kiss and a third kiss and a hundredth kiss. 

Then he opens his mouth to deepen the kiss, and my whole body goes electric. 

I take my hand to the side of his face and he grabs the back of my neck to pull me down closer, until there isn't an inch of space between us. He drags me on top of him, and the kiss speeds up, gets more desperate. I put all my want—all the late nights spent thinking about him, all the times I had to see him coming out of the shower, all the feelings I'd get watching him wield his sword—into this kiss. I try to show him how much I love him, how much I need him, how completely and utterly _ his _I am. 

I think it works; when we pull apart, gasping for breath, he's looking at me like I'm a new person to him. Not the wanker who goads him into going off and whose nose he once broke and who’s lied to him a thousand times about how I really feel. But, like I'm me—like he really sees me. 

"I wasn't sure you'd kiss me back," he admits with a shy, but triumphant, smile. 

"That's because you're an idiot." 

This makes his smile wider, and he kisses me again. He kisses me until my lips are sore, until I physically feel like I have to stop. Even then, I think I'd still keep going; that is, until Simon yawns directly into my mouth. 

"Tired, Snow?" He nods, and I get off of him to collect my things for my nighttime routine. He changes in the bathroom first, since he's much quicker, and then I go in. (We're not about to change in front of one another; not _ that _ much has changed.) _ (Yet.) _When I exit the loo, Snow is laying down on his bed with his eyes on me. 

I'm about to go to my own bed, but Snow stops me. "Wait." I turn to face him; he's biting his lip like he's nervous. "Stay with me?" 

My heart thunders in my ears. (Who knew a vampire's heartbeat could be so loud?) (It's Snow's effect; he defies all logic.) I cross the two steps of space between our beds slowly, like I'm afraid he'll change his mind. He doesn't; he just makes room for me (as much as he can in his twin sized bed). I crawl in beside him, leaving barely an inch of space between us. 

"You're cold," he says, though he moves himself into my arms anyways. 

"Maybe you're just hot," I counter, and he gives me a self-satisfied grin at that. I roll my eyes. "Not what I meant."

I cast a **Lights Out **and the room goes dark. He rests his head on my chest, and I'm afraid he can hear my hummingbird heartbeat. (If he does, he doesn't say anything about it.)

"What am I going to do now?" he murmurs after a stretch of silence. His voice is muffled by my T-shirt, so I pull back to face him.

"About?" I ask. 

"Everything. I—well." His voice is small and scared, almost childlike, as he speaks. Looking at his vulnerable expression, he doesn't seem like the Chosen One right now; he seems like just a boy. "I have to figure out how to beat Humdrum all alone now."

The defeat in his voice almost chokes me up, but I manage to make my voice almost steady when I reply, "You're not alone. You have me."

He kisses me for that, and even after all the time we've already spent kissing, the shock of it still takes my breath away. 

"I know you said you wouldn't again… but could you… please...?" 

Despite his stammering, I know what he means. "You don't have to ask," I respond, and I grab my wand. I stroke his cheek, and then place a kiss on a mole there I've been wanting to kiss since I was twelve. **"Sweet Dreams, **Simon." 

Simon's eyelids flutter shut, and he's asleep before I've set my wand back on the bedside table. I fall asleep listening to the rise and fall of his chest, relaxed by the joy of having Simon Snow safe in my arms. 

* * *

**Simon**

When I wake, it takes me a full minute to realize I'm not dreaming. That it's really Basilton Pitch's hair I've got in my mouth. 

I lean back to take it in, the sight of him right now. He's usually got the covers over his head or his back turned to me when I wake up, so I haven't had very many opportunities to look at him in the morning. His face is peaceful, devoid of his usual furrowed brows or sneer. He's pouting, just a little, and it shows off how soft his lips are (though, I found that out first hand last night). (Crowley, we kissed last night. A lot.) 

I take my fingertips and trace down his face, from his widows peak, to his thick eyebrows, to his crooked nose, to his lips. I think about checking for fangs when Baz opens his eyes. His lips part slightly over my thumb, and I smile sheepishly, caught in the act of admiring him. (Though he doesn't seem to mind much, if the cocky smirk he gives me is anything to go off.) 

"Good morning, darling," he says, and my heart explodes out of my chest. He looks embarrassed by his use of a pet name, but I adore it, and my grin goes from sheepish to thrilled. 

"How did you sleep?" he asks, before I can comment on '_ darling' _ (or call him it back).

"Very well, thanks to you." I brush a lock of hair behind his ear and his lips quirk upwards.

"What do you dream about when I cast the spell on you?" 

I feel myself flushing. Part of me wants to lie, but I can't imagine successfully duping Baz Pitch. So I tell him the truth. "You," I whisper, like it's a secret. "Always you." 

His reaction is worth my honesty. Because he gives me a smile—a real smile. One that's better than anything my subconscious could ever come up with. I'm dazzled by his happiness. I can feel my own joy building in my chest, despite everything that happened yesterday. 

When he kisses me, it's electrifying: like fireworks, like lightning, like _ magic. _It's everything my brain conjured up when I was asleep and more. Because he's more than just a fantasy. More than just a dream. 

He's real here in my arms. He's _ mine. _

  
I dive back in for another kiss, and then another, until we're in bed well into the late morning, all the while thinking, _ I never want to wake up from you. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for reading! Let me know what you think if you have a minute xo 
> 
> also, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://annabellelux.tumblr.com) here


End file.
